It’s true. Whether you want to or not, whether you realize it’s creeping up on you, or not, at some point you begin the process of turning into your parents.
Mine used to buy huge amounts of pecans—enough to fill a 33 gallon trash can—to feed the neighborhood squirrels. I don’t know if they still do that, but I do know they feed the neighborhood stray cats, and at least one found the deal so good she’s stayed around for 10 years. She even tolerates being scooped up and taken to the vet for shots. Didn’t complain much when they had her spayed.
They also used to put out bird feeders. I’m sure the thought was to just feed the birds, but I often wondered if it wasn’t to provide Play Time for all the stray kitties.
But, back to the squirrels. They loved those pecans, and when the back deck was devoid of their favorite nuts, one or more of them would come up to the back door and peek through the glass, looking for a human to come open the trash can and dish out a bunch of pecans. One looked like he was trying to knock on the door—he wanted nuts, and he wanted them ASAP.
We have a couple of squirrels that live in the tree outside our front window. When winter hit we started to worry about what they were doing for food. A couple times a week we’d see one of them scrambling across the street, and we assumed it was in the pursuit of foodstuffs.
So we did it. We became my parents. We bought a squirrel feeder and nailed it to the tree, and bought a bag of dried corn cobs for them to munch on. They appreciate it, though looking at them, they’re not starving.
The bonus to feeding them? It drives the PsychoKitty nuts. Max sits in front of the window and watches them (and the birds that come to grab the leftovers), and he squeaks and chitters, and dances in place like a toddler who has to pee. Hank plopped down in front of the window last night and wouldn’t let Max near it—if Max were human, he would have stared crying. I think Hank knew it, too.
Heh.
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