Walking from the garage to my back door after running errands I saw them. The black one had short hair and very bright yellow eyes. He, I think it is a he, walked out of the yard keeping an eye on my every move. The other was gray striped with longer hair and he,also I am not sure, was sitting next ot he steps. They have been around my back yard off and on all summer. The gray one was around last year too. You have probably figured out that they are cats. I poured some food onto the ground and put out a bowl of water. He groweled and them woofed. Yup I said woofed. He must have been raised with dogs.
I have one of those yards. I have lived here since November 1972. In that time I have raised baby birds that fell from the next. Fed squirrels during the extra snowy winters. An English Lop rabbit wondered in to my yard one summer and stayed. Bugsy was the reigning queen of the back yard for five years. Even the squirrells stopped by to visit.
A skunk took up residence under the neighbors house but spent her time digging in my flower bed and grass for grubs and such. A pest control company near by was hired to trap her and rehomed her on the other side of the river next to the big power plant. Unfortunately for the college students renting the house it wasn't before she sprayed one of them at two in the morning. He was quick thinking and closed the car door before he took the full load. The garbage that week was more aromatic than usual.
The list includes several snakes who were carefully removed from my basement before I found the hole they used to sneek in. A plague of mice off and on through out the years. The worst being a total of one hundred from October first to May first. It was not pretty. The o'possum who lives in the hole in my eighty foot maple tree is mulitiple grandchild of the the first on that arrived in the early eighties. The racoon is one of many that has invaded at times. I wish he would find some where else to live and hunt. He has attacked squirrel nests and bird nests and tore up potted plants and is just the biggest pain in the butt. One of the survivors is still living in my front pine tree.
I feed the birds. I whistle and they come flying in flocks that make enough noise to wake the dead. And alert all the other birds. This wouldn't usually be a problem except the other birds are starlings and black birds. One woodpecker was so hungry one time he landed on my hand when I was filling the suit cage. We both went "OH!" and he flew off. The robins feeding babies mob me when I head out in the yard. I get packages of dried meal worms and toss some out three or four times a day.
The cats are special in my memories. There was Oscar the big orange tom. Felix the dark grey blue tabby. Princess who presented me with six kittens who took over the house for eight weeks of madness. And now there are two more. I will continue to feed and water them until I learn for sure they are homeless or find where they live. 