She was brought to the Humane Society as a sick & pregnant 2 year old, found on the street. Once they nursed her back to health and she had her kittens, she was ready for adoption. The Redmond shelter was wonderful, letting us walk around the rooms with the cats, experiencing their different personalities. When we saw this little calico girl, we fell in love - and then the volunteer got out the laser and our new love chased it all over the room. Love at (almost) first sight.
She's been home with us for about a month now and is all settled in. Since we live on a dead-end street with no traffic and no free-roaming dogs, we knew she'd enjoy exploring our half acre property. Little did we know that she'd take over everything except the mortgage!
We seem to have a serious infestation of grasshoppers every summer. They jump and fly in my face as I walk across the garden - and their munching makes the plants look bedraggled and ugly. No longer - the little Terror of the Neighborhood loves to leap up and pull them out of the air! Then she bites them in half, obviously enjoying her new-found job as resident hunter.
When the grasshoppers began to avoid her (or she's killed off enough of them to make a difference), she must have decided to find another victim - and now she's after the voles and chipmunks. I've been plagued by them both, eating the plants in my greenhouse and even coming up on my elevated deck to eat the container plants. One chipmunk spent its days munching sunflower seeds in the bird feeder, eating the flowers in the pots, and sleeping it off in a tiny, almost unreachable space between the plants. Not any more - she watched the chipmunk from the window until she knew "his" routine and then went out and had him for lunch! It was frightening to watch, but I had to admire her tenacity.
She's even challenged the local deer - growling and arching her back when they appear in the garden. The same behavior worked on the neighbor's dog but I'm not so sure it's going to stop the flower-eating deer in our yard. Since she's a tiny cat, I really love her attitude.
We try hard to not use pesticides at our house - I love the bees and butterflies that seem to hang out in our garden all summer long. It means that sometimes our plants look a little abused with holes in some leaves and stems with no flowers. But now I've got a new pest management plan: let the Terror of the Neighborhood loose in the garden and step away from the sprayer. She knows her job and she's doing it well.
Now if she'd just stop bringing her half-eaten trophies home and leaving them on the doormat to decompose, she'd be a great addition to my integrated pest management!
Update: on Friday, September 4th, she brought home (to the back door mat) 3 voles: two dead, one still alive enough for her to chase it around the back porch containers for 30 minutes. I don't expect to see many voles in our yard this winter!
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