Storm: 1 month with us

The snow is gone. Now we have rain and mud.
Storm is very comfortable here, upstairs and downstairs.  She knows how to get to the basement when she's had enough of the upstairs characters.  She likes racing around the woodpiles and sleeping in a curled up fleece blanket in her basement.  She's begun playing with corrugated cardboard. We've had a gate at the top of the stairs for a long while so Buddy doesn't fall down; that helps keep Remington on his floor.
She's a bit moth-eaten from the ringworm meds but has gained plenty of weight. She's still loveable, head butts us and Gambol, too. Buddy is oblivious to her.  Remington is still a little too curious for our comfort.

Gambol and Storm relaxing together

Paul and Remington watching Storm relax

Storm

Wednesday, Nov. 14. PM
First snow storm of the season predicted. Lots of precip due.
Look who Paul found in a garden bucket at our front door:

She's young, friendly, and very skinny.  With the storm coming, we can't leave her out to brave it alone.  I put this picture on the local pet rescue FB sites, asked our neighbors, and put a picture at the post office.  No takers, so we made her a nest in the garage and fed her a can of tuna. For a litter box, we fashioned a box of potting soil.  This will have to do.
Thursday, Nov. 15
Snow won't arrive until 10:AM so I ran off to get some real cat supplies all the while hoping someone would claim this little girl.
$71 later we probably have a free cat. Dogs don’t know it yet.  Night temperature is low 30s and we are expecting more than 6” snow and rain today, so what are softies to do? Run to the store for food and litter, flea collar and a toy, of course. She spent the night in the garage in a nest of blankets.
She had a couple of ticks, but other than being very skinny, she seems healthy. No fleas and her fur is shiny. She’s friendly and likes lap sitting and neck crawling.
So, next up dog-cat intros. Gambol and Buddy learned to like chickens, so I guess we’ll do the same training for the cat.
Name? Storm, perhaps.
Friday, Nov 16
She'd have been buried in this snow.

Storm is comfortable in my lap hammock. She’s always ready to greet us when we visit her realm. She may still be catching up on sleep and eating from her walkabout, and she doesn’t yell/whine/vocalize nearly as much as she did the first day. She purrs (or snores) in my lap.

Saturday, Nov. 17
We moved her to the basement where we set up a dog crate with lots of blankets, a comfortable chair for us, and her litter box with real litter.  She still devours all food we put down, but she's definitely not as bony as she was 2 days ago. Noises from upstairs don't seem to bother her.

She's still a snuggler.  She greets us with head bumps and chest snuggles. She likes to walk around our shoulders too.
Still haven't told the dogs about their new sister.  They suspect something's not right in the basement, however.

Predator

We had a new visitor this week. I was working at my computer but I decided to look out our front window to see what was going on around our house. Maybe I was alerted by an angry chipmunk warning the forest or perhaps by the sudden stillness that often accompanies strangers to our forest. I saw 3 cats about 20 yards in front of the house. Although we do see a domestic cat (or maybe a feral cat) once in a while, it is quite unusual to see several cats. I got the camera because I suspected that I was seeing a mother bobcat with 2 kittens. I quickly took a couple of pictures, but only one kitten was visible from the window, so I went downstairs and quietly opened the front door to see if I could take any more pictures. The kitten I had seen upstairs was sitting on a pile of construction material looking right at me. I snapped several pictures over a minute or two as the kitten posed for me, apparently fearless. Finally it got bored or Mother called and it melted back into the forest.
Notice the white around its eyes and the three points above and between the eyes. The back of its ears are striped black-white-black. The white outlines of its eyes, the little points between the eyes and the striped ears are all distinctive of the bobcat. Catching a bobcat on film was a real thrill.

Easter Saturday

What is this?

What a difference 24 hours makes! 5-6" last night hardly make it look like Easter weekend. A fox sparrow and a white throated sparrow joined us for breakfast and the usual murder of crows did also. We even had a flock of 30 or so robins hang out for a few minutes in our tree tops. Finding worms today was a hard task at 25 degrees early.

Cat

5:00-ish, just after sunset we saw a large cat (not Nittany Lion sized, but larger than a house cat) prowling through the trees to the left of the Lower Jennifer Trail. We grabbed the glasses but didn't get a good look. Neither of us saw a tail; definately a short nose, round head, cat-like walk.
A few minutes after we lost it below the house we saw it crossing the Shannon Trail behind the house; again no tail view.
The Baron thinks he saw cat prints in those general vicinities after the last snow. The cat must find hunting successful. It looked round and furry from a distance. Of course, temps in the upper teens would have helped the furry view.

Wildcat

Just at dusk I saw something odd cross the driveway down by the Toy Shed. It was much too dark to take a picture. It moved cat like but had longer legs than a house cat. I saw the long tail but couldn't get any color.
Ron said there were several deer in the meadow that circled the fawns and stomped and snorted, generally acting very worried. He didn't see the problem, but knew something odd was going on. I couldn't see the deer but I think my attention was drawn out that way by all the snorting and huffing.

By Sara Ganim
(http://groups.google.com/groups/unlock?msg=617d1669faa55ef7&_done=/group/BigCats/browse_thread/thread/a454b5e7aae904e6)
@centredaily.com
Patton Township police are asking residents to look out for a wildcat
on the loose near Julian Pike and state Route 550.
Sgt. Frank Monroe said officers received a report Friday night of a
cheetah running across state Route 550, but the animal turned out to
be a serval, a medium-sized wildcat native to Africa.
"This is weird -- very, very bizarre," Monroe said.
People should not be alarmed by the creature, according to Monroe, who
said when police attempted to capture the serval Friday night, it was
very passive.
The main concern is preventing anyone -- and the serval -- from
getting hurt as the search continues.
"I don't want to see it get hit by a car, or someone stop on the
highway and get hit by a car," Monroe said.
Police are seeking the owners of the serval, because the animal could
not survive a central Pennsylvania winter, Monroe said. Police have
posted fliers asking residents to be on the lookout for the animal.
Monroe described the animal as a very odd creature with very long legs
and is twice the size of an average house cat. It weighs about 25
pounds and is 18 to 20 inches tall.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission requires licenses for people keeping
servals in the state. The Game Commission has no licenses issued in
Centre County, and Monroe said the serval could have wandered from
another county.
Anyone with information about the serval is asked to contact Patton
Township police at 234-0987.
Sara Ganim can be reached at 231-4616
_http://www.centredaily.com/news/local/story/152648.html_