We've been seeing a regular visitor in our garden, even though we thought we'd fenced it in enough to stop Chester escaping and turned it into Al-Cat-Raz.
This is Stanley. We found out his name from a neighbour a couple of doors down. He lives at the bottom of our road, and seems to have decided that our garden is part of his territory.
Apparently, before moving to our area recently, he lived in a more rural place where he had huge amounts of land to roam around, and isn't used to the higher density of houses and cats in a town. It probably also helps that our garden is very cat-friendly, with lots of interesting things to explore and plenty of good ambush spots.
He turns up every day, regular as clockwork, at 10.30am. Sometimes he also comes back at 12.30 (exactly...). I guess he has a set patrol route he follows.
A complication is that at a quick glance, if they're moving fast Stanley and Chester can easily be mistaken for each other.
This is Stanley hiding in a mostly flattened box - I always seem to end up with a pile of carboard boxes waiting for a trip to the local council dump.
It's hard to tell from the photo, but that's his back legs sticking out at the other end. He's a very lanky athletic sort of cat, which is why he's able to climb up and down the fir tree and over the fence with ease. I've even seen him climb right up to the top of the tree, which is quite a feat !
The real problem is that for some reason, Chester and Duncan are terrified of Stanley. When he comes into the garden, they both bolt indoors and hide.
The reality is that I think Stanley is just really lonely when his parents are out at work, and just wants to be friends. I haven't seen him do anything hostile to our two, although he'd quite a jumpy cat who does small hisses when he's scared.
But as these last couple of photos show, when I stand next to him, he turns upside down, rolls around and does all the things a cat does when they really, really want to be accepted. I feel terrible shooing him out of the garden, but I have to do what is best for our boys !
Super-long tongue in this picture !
Hopefully in time, Chester, Duncan and Stanley will start to get along. I think it's possible, but might just take a bit of time.
All photos by me. Cat not by me.