Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty!

A few evenings ago, I wrapped up in a sweater and headed out the front door to call my new kitties, Jack and Jill, in from an afternoon of play in the great outdoors. Our house sits on five acres on the side of a mountain with a stream and the bottom and a beaver pond to one side. Lots of trees....lots of creepy crawly predators.

It was about dusk and I was beginning to be a little nervous about the cats being out so long. They are about nine months old now and ENORMOUS Maine Coons. The male, Jack, is so big that he's like lifting weights. No kidding!

Anyway...I digress.

I stood on the porch. It was about dusk and I didn't see anything. No nothing. No birds, no cats, no dogs, no nothing.  So I called: "Here, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty."

What to my wandering eyes should appear but a yard full of deer who stood and made a mad dash to the yard. Imagine a house on a hill, the yard with a huge incline going straight down and all of a sudden about 10 deer, does and bucks alike running in your direction. If I didn't know these deer, I'd think they were going to stampede me and run right into the house. But they ran up the mountain, never taking their eyes off me, and stopped right at the front porch banister. I reached down and pet a few of them on the nose. One, a yearling buck we've loving named John Jacob (after Titanic's John Jacob Astor) stood on his hind legs and waited for a pat on the snout.

Most people would have freaked. Not so with these deer. Up here in these mountains we all have deer. We recognize our deer; they recognize us. They will sit with you in the yard. Our cats even sit with them. Same night as this one of the bucks gave our male cat a bath....and he LET him! WEIRD!

So the deer came running when I called the cats. The cats were nowhere to be found until about a half hour later. Which begs the question: which "pets" recognize my voice? The ones who live in the woods or the ones who live in the house?