Actually, when I asked readers to send in photos of their animals (including d*gs) eating Thanksgiving leftovers, I didn’t expect a response. But the readers came through, giving me enough material for a Caturday Felid post. Plus you get to see each other’s animals.
First on deck is biologist Sarah Crews, who feeds (and shelters) feral cats that roam her neighborhood in Oakland, California. As she feeds the cats (and even takes them to the vet), they gradually become tamer indoor/outdoor cats, with the result shown below. Soft-hearted Sarah gives them all tuna on Thanksgiving, which she’s renamed “Tunagiving”. Here’s most (but not all) of the crew:
Tunagiving! (L to R: Buster, Lysette, Gray Cat, Tib Tabs, Surprise Cat, Chippi, Special Patrol Unit – Siameezy is out of the pic)
“Special Patrol Unit” is one of the best names I’ve ever heard for a cat!
My favorite, the postmodernist Professeur Chippeur, or “Chippi” for short. He’s a beaut!
Siameezy (this is a stray!):
Reader Charlie Jones in Pittsburgh sends us two cats a-nomming:
My daughter Hannah prepared a feast for our two cats. She placed turkey from Thanksgiving upon a slice of turkey luncheon meat and garnished the pile with cat treats and catnip. The cats were pretty excited about this treat! As evidence, note that Neville’s head is blurry because he is trying to carry the meat safely away from the rapacious maw of his uncle Grover (right).
Now that’s a meal!
From reader Ben Goren, who wrote:
Not exactly leftovers…but I whipped some cream this morning, and, of course, Baihu got to lick the whisk.
Reader Gregg sent a photo of his thieving cat Magpie (another great name):
You asked for photos of our pets eating Thanksgiving leftovers. Attached is a picture of Magpie who stole this piece of turkey leg from my plate while I was up from the table.
Reader Michael called this picture “A kitty with bad intent,” and explained:
I just wanted to share this picture of a cat with bad intent. I thought you’d appreciate it. I was thankful he shared his Thanksgiving turkey with his Chief of Staff (his other staff members had gone for the day).
Luna, one of the two black cats of Robin Elisabeth Cornwell, got turkey scraps with her kibble:
Reader eryops sent a video:
Here’s a video of our cat Anna, who barely eats any meat at all. No chicken, no beef, very little fish, and very little pork. Two Thanksgivings ago, we put out some scraps for the cats, and they ended up staying in dishes on the floor for a few days, desiccating. She finally decided to take the plunge, and as you can see, she spends the first half of the video licking the turkey skin (she licks up her wet food when eating) before finally figuring out that she needed teeth to get the job done.
Reader Tubby Fleck shows us his cat Orson, adding this:
Orson didn’t get any leftovers- these are meaty bits from the neck which I pulled apart to make gravy with, so he got his share before I got mine. He seems to prefer his usual canned turkey paté over fresh-from-the-oven turkey flakes.
Noms:
Turkey coma:
Reader Beckie shows us cats who had the traditional nap without the traditional food:
Our boys turn their noses up at human food so they did not partake in our feast. They, however, are very willing to participate in the traditional afternoon nap. This is a picture of me waking them up. Mufasa is the orange one, Squawk the tabby (our vet says he is a mutant calico, as he has an orange spot on his belly). Happy Thanksgiving!
And reader Mark Sturtevant contributes today’s token d*g:
Here is Percy enjoying Thanksgiving turkey and stuffing on his usual kibble.
What cute animals! I love all the stray kittehs having their food. I have a friend in Israel who feeds all the stray cats. Like me, she is allergic to cats so she can’t have one of her own. But, those strays are practically hers. She even lost track of one & put out the word to find the kitteh.
Love the colouring on the dog. Does he have some mastiff in him? When I was in high school, my parents’ pure bred yellow lab got knocked up by, what we think was a bull mastiff. We realized she was pregnant when she was hungry all the time. Unlike when she was bred formally to make more show quality labs, she had more progeny with this litter (6 puppies vs the 4 she had the other two times she was bred on purpose). Some of the puppies had that pretty marbled fur & they had the best personalities!
Oh and the look on Baihu’s face is precious!
The stripey coloring is called ‘brindle’, and it is found in various dog breeds.
A good friend, who runs perhaps the only organic farm adjacent to a steel mill, has a handsome brindle Pit Bull that ambles around the fields with him. Unfortunately I don’t have/can’t find a pic of the dog.
That’s quite the study in contrasts. 🙂
I forgot, we still do not know what Percy is for certain as he was a rescue dog, but in appearance and personality he is a dead ringer for a general purpose working and hunting breed known as the mountain cur.
He looks lovely. You can get his DNA tested. I had my dog tested & gave a kit to my parents for their dog.
He’s really striking-looking, Mark!
Wonderful critters, all.
b&
Ms. Crews has a true gift for names. I hope she discovers a new species at some point.
Unfortunately, the woman who lives next door to us also rescues feral cats. The cats are allowed to roam and hunt. So far they’ve killed all the little frogs we had all over our yard and killed at least 6 birds at our bird feeders. We don’t want to put out bird food anymore because we’re just providing bait for the cat’s traps. And nobody else on our block can ever let their cats out of their houses because these feral cats will kill them. So although it sounds nice to rescue feral cats, if they’re allowed to roam outside they cause big problems. They may become somewhat nicer over time, but I have yet to see anyone succeed in approaching any of them or getting any of them to come near them. From the picture it appears as if Sarah Crews is feeding her cats on an outdoor porch which tells me perhaps her feral cats are allowed unfettered roaming. If so, she may want to consider the effect on her neighbors, her neighbor’s animals and the wild animals in the area. We have a rescued dog and a rescued cat here in our house by the way, so I’m all for rescuing these unfortunate animals, but we also have to be responsible neighbors.
Sarah’s feral’s all have “ear tips” which means that the moggies have been trapped-neutered-and returned (TNR). There is a misconception that people who feed stray cats are responsible for their presence. Stray cats are most often thrown away when irresponsible owners grow tired of them – often when the kitties reach adolescence and start yowling and spraying. Domestic cats need to be neutered as soon as possible before they get to this stage. Larry, because the ferals near you are so aggressive it is possible that they have never been TNRed or otherwise neutered.
Feral cats are indeed one of the leading causes of bird mortality, right up there with habitat loss and window strikes. Free roaming cats kill over 1 billion birds in the US each year. Window strikes kill 350 million or so. So yes, please don’t feed the birds where cats can get to them (or near windows.
I don’t think they’re here because my neighbor feeds them. They are here because she brought them here and she feeds them. That would be great if they were inside her house most of the time, but they’re hardly ever inside. I’m not sure where anyone stands on the inside/outside issue, but outdoor cats usually have much shorter lives than indoor cats and any pet left outdoors most of the time is a threat to the quality of life for all creatures. It also gets cold in Connecticut in the winter. Average January low is 16F.
And she adopted them from the pound. Does any pound allow adoption without neutering? Yet they fight and hunt and make lots of threatening cat noises. Amazing capacity for volume. It sounds like they use an amplifier.
We would like to do a bit of adopting ourselves. Our 16 bear old cat, Clementine, died earlier this year. She spent the last part of her life terrorized by her feral neighbors. My wife and I have always had cats, but I won’t get one here until something changes. My dog tries hard, but he can’t fill the void Clem left. I’ve tried talking to our neighbor and talking directly to the cats. The worst listener contest is a toss-up so far. She thinks I’m just an old complainer. I tried to explain that I’m not “just” anything. I am, however, an old complainer.
Wonderful shots, everyone–of very important parts of the family!
I think the name ‘Special Patrol Unit’ is taken from the 1980s English comedy “The Young Ones”. The character Vivian had a Scottish hamster (accent and all) called ‘Special Patrol Group’ or SPG.
That is true.
MY CAT EXPLANATION WHICH I WILL JUST COPY AND PASTE FROM HERE ON OUT (OR CEILING CAT CAN) WHEN I’M LECTURED ON FERAL CATS:
FoF trapped the cats and released them because the City of Oakland said someone around was complaining. As for our neighbors, the people in the apt next to us feed one or two different cats, the neighbors to the right of us have a backyard filled with dog shit, the neighbors behind us feed 3-4 different cats. Our cats seem to confine their “business” to our yard since the other neighbors don’t have yards. We tend to clean it up. Some of them also use the litter boxes inside. We made a great effort for several months to get them adopted, but no one wanted them because they weren’t kittens. We began feeding them a year ago with our neighbors we share the duplex with because there were THREE. Now there are more, though no new ones for 6 months. When one comes around that isn’t fixed, we trap them. There are only 3 or so that leave the yard. I am very well aware of what cats do to birds. However, they can’t catch the hummingbirds, they haven’t yet caught the chickadees, they can’t catch jays or ravens and they have caught a pigeon (because someone feeds those in front of our house and one cat goes and gets them). I like pigeons a lot, but the populations seem to be doing fine, though I haven’t tested this. Once I saw a phoebe in the yard, but that’s my backyard bird list. They have killed some rats, but those are introduced so I’m ok with that too. We are in downtown Oakland. It’s pretty urban and there are no lizards for them to kill here. We have a cat door which is why they are indoor/out…I have tried to keep them in. They jump at the window and door head first until they nearly knock themselves out. It’s dangerous. When we move, which I’m sure we will sometime, I will make sure they stay in, but for now it’s impossible. I appreciated the concern for the bird – it’s something many people don’t know about, but really, we’ve done all we can- I’m not going to abandon them or kill them.
As for naming species, I’ve named about 50 so far, all spiders. I tend to use indigenous names and make editors upset that they are difficult to pronounce, but no one seems to be talking about Karaops vadlaadambara or Selenops huetocotl at the moment, so I think we’re ok.