Fibre-Free Fickle Feral Feline Feces

December 4th, 2007, 5 Comments »

Requisite Cat ShotOur bedroom is on the top floor of our limestone farmhouse. There’s kind of an outdoor landing outside our bedroom door, which you cross to descend stairs into the rest of the house. We’ve occasionally seen cats on this landing, as they cross rooftops and balconies and lick their tongues into the corners of the evening.

Last week, on three separate occasions, we’ve found, well, piles of crap in various corners of this landing. Large piles of crap for a cat. If the location wasn’t accessible only to cats, you’d think a dog was responsible (some of the cats around here are big, muscular beasts). And, without getting too graphic, these cats were not getting enough fibre in their diets.

What to do? The cats come and do their business in the middle of the night. There was no way to fence off the landing, or access to it from the roof. There was only one solution.

I made like Farley Mowat, and marked my territory. We figured a little human urine might turn off the fickle felines.

And we were right. It’s been four nights now, and there’s no cat poo in sight. Darren 1, Feral Cats 0.

5 Comments »

Two Pictures of Rain

September 28th, 2007, 3 Comments »

As I mentioned, we’ve had a couple of days of rain here in Malta. The first was an intense over-night thunderstorm. The next morning I snapped a couple of photos. The first is of the sodden fields behind our house:

First Rain in Four Months

And this is the rain in our pool. I took it while strategically folded under the patio table, to keep my camera relatively dry. I’m pretty happy with how this one turned out:

Rain in our Pool

3 Comments »