Show me your blacksmith pets

[Daswulf]

Spooky is just a good name for a black cat. 

 

Cute puppers Jeff!

[The Jeff]

Thanks daswulf. 

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

While I was Working this afternoon I heard some mewing coming from the field, 

tracked it down to a armadillo hole underneath a broke down truck,

found the feral polydactyl tom kitten, looking like a drowned rat and covered in mud, 

I grabbed a pair of welding gloves and crawled under the truck and fished him outta the hole, 

imma thinkin something got after him during the storm last night cause he had a limp on one of his back legs,

he’s about like holding a burlap sack full of bobcats! Lol

i threw him in a box an drove him to town to get him checked out by the vet and brought him back to the shop an turned him loose in the abyss of my store room shelves where nothing will bother him till he get to feeling better

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Good rescue, I bet he will repay ya in reducing the mice population around the place.

[George N. M.]

Hopefully, you can gentle him down enough that he'll at least tolerate you.  We have some feral cats around here for which I will put out food but they will run if they see a human, even at a distance.  They are much spookier than the antelope.  If he's old enough get him fixed.

GNM

[LeeJustice]

Great job TW.  That poor little fella.  I hope he has a much better life with you looking out.  The younger they are, the more quickly they can recover from being fixed.  I think that two pounds is the minimum weight at which they will neuter him.

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

Thanks y’all,

I’ve been able to tame down a few of the feral cats that show up, here a there over the years, I’ve even got some of em to hop up on my lap but they don’t trust other people,

That said every now an then there’s a wild  one that just ain’t having it lol

my pet cats that live in the house they all have been spayed and neutered,

But for the wild cats its Like $75 a pop down there in town to get a cat snipped so I just focus on catching the stray/feral females that show up so I don’t have litters of kittens every five minutes! Lol 

That’s worked pretty well to keep the cat population down around the shop over the years,

I actually got it down to only two cat’s living out there until this little guy showed up yesterday,

I asked the vet about rabies shots an stuff but they told me he was to young for anything right now anyways, they gave him an antibiotic shot and a pain killer shot to help with that back leg,

[Frosty]

Spaying and neutering ferals that hang around your place will drive off most strays. I forget what that's called but it works really well, it kept our barn clear of litters for quite a few years. Then we sold the last of our livestock but still had a dozen bales of hay on the hay shelf and before we knew it we had two litters of kittens in the gaps between bales. 

When they were weening age we live trapped all but two of them and rehomed them. The local animal shelter fixes ferals at a good discount, or did anyway. Deb gentled two down enough to keep, Snicker and Doodle. Snicker has very strong survival instincts, it took Deb months of daily sitting and talking to get him to eat out of the wire kennel on the hay shelf. Doodle on the other hand was oblivious to hazards and came to live with us in the house in maybe two weeks. Then he made a break for it out the door and the local horned owl took him to the chicks. 

Anyway, the extremely wary boy became Snicker Doodle and lives upstairs. 

Cats are cool people.

Frosty The Lucky.

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

Well worked all day in the shop an never saw the kitten do I figured he ran off,

just heard a mew come from the parts room and took a peek and saw him on a self

so I brought him a water bowl, a bowl of cat food, an a can of tuna, an shut the door so the dogs, cats, possums and everything else can’t get in there an take his dinner and bug him

[Frosty]

You know what happens if you feed a stray don't you? 

Many years ago my across the way trailer court neighbor, Phyllis complained the semi wild stray she'd fed stunk. Sooo, I picked it up, tossed a wash cloth in the bathtub and gave it a bath. Yeah, I gave a feral that didn't trust or like  most anybody a bath in warm water, w/soap, rinsed it under the bathtub faucet and blew dried it. I came out with a fluffy clean cat and nary a scratch. It still hissed at and scratched Phyllis's older daughter (proving cats are smarter than expected) any time she got close, and tolerated the rest at best, neighbors not so much. Me on the other hand, always had it in my lap purring and nuzzling me, I had to toss it in the door and close it quick to keep it from following me home.

Funny thing is, doing that sort of thing with hard to handle animals gentles them down more often that not. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[JHCC]

You. 
Took. 
My. 
Bone.
 

(aka “Sibling Rivalry”.)

[Frosty]

Our old girl, the late great Abby used to quietly collect all the toys, tugs, chews and lay on them in her bed. Baxter and the late great Pocket then tried to sneak them out and away. Now it's just Baxter and Ronnie but the games are never ending. Except times like this, the wood stove is rolling heat like the summer sun an both are comatose spooning in front of it.

The upstairs cat Qiviut steals toys and hides them so he can bring them out and play with them in front of the dogs.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[JHCC]

Let me guess: Qiviut has the softest fur EVER, right?

[Les L]

My youngest daughter would see a feral cat walking in the cattle pasture behind the house and go pick it up and pet it, never got bit or scratched. When she moved to Nashville for college the first cold morning she heard a noise under her car hood when she started it and found a young feral cat in the engine compartment, fished it out, dropped it off at a veterinarian on her way to the clinic to get herself fixed up, and seven years later the cats still sleeping in the bed with her and doing good 

[Shainarue]

Frosty, I have an interesting, somewhat similar dynamic going on in our home. Our late great Max (dog) LOVED all his toys and loved getting new toys even more. We had so many toys within a few years that we started storing some of them in pillowcases and rotating them out every once in awhile - presenting as "new" and getting all the wiggle excitement. Of course he periodically still got truly new toys. 
When Max passed, I moved his basket continuing the most current rotation of plushies & soft tugs to the basement. Fast forward about 6 months and we brought home a new dog - but Millie doesn't really care about new toys. She enjoys playing with a few favorites and that's about it. So the basket of Max's old toys remained (forgotten by then) in the basement. Fast forward another few years and we brought home a new cat. Sometime in the last 6 months or so - about a year after bringing Stella (the new cat) home - we started noticing random toys in the garage. I follow the trail of toys and find the basket in the basement. Stella had discovered (and loved) this basket of Max's toys. I put all the toys back, and she would - little by little - bring the toys back out. Eventually it morphed to bringing the toys all the way into the living room. The basket lives in the far opposite corner from the basement's entrance door - which is down a flight of stairs, through the garage, and through the cat door of the kitchen. Quite a trek for a little cat like Stella! And some of the toys she brings up are bigger than her!

So Frosty, the description of the dynamic between Abby, Baxter & Pocket made me wonder if this is how Stella and Max might have interacted. 

Side story now that y'all know the backstory of Stella hording toys - I put our Christmas tree up last week. As soon as I had it up - not even lit yet - Stella ran downstairs and came back up with a HUGE homemade soft tug toy of Max's and laid it - very deliberately - under the tree. As of today, 5 days later, there is a pile of of all the smaller toys. I'd guess about 15 or so piled up under there. If I were to move them all back to the basket in the basement, she'd slowly bring them all back up. 

 

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Sounds like Max reincarnated. We had a Russian blue cat adopt us and just about the same thing happened. That cat had so many of Max's (our late schnauzers) quirks, I swear he was Max. At the time he adopted us we also had an outside dog Great Pyrenees/Komondor cross that tried to run him off. One day I was outside and the cat Merlin came up to me and the dog came running and barking at him, I swear the cat barked back at him and the dog stopped, looked at Merlin and turned around and went back to his favorite place on the deck. They were best of friends after that.

[rls1160]

Today was a happy day!

New anvil arrived and the girls came to check it out.

KC is the 8 year old and Dale is the 6 month old.

The baby in the middle is a 250# Fontanini anvil.

Merry Christmas!

 

[George N. M.]

Looks like 3 good girls to me.

Stay warm.

[Frosty]

On 12/18/2022 at 3:08 PM, JHCC said:

Let me guess: Qiviut has the softest fur EVER, right?

He's mostly if not all Maine Coon, you bet it's soft. Sometimes something will be bugging me and after searching for a while I'll find a cat hair under an eyelid, doesn't hurt just something you can feel.

That sounds a lot like the antics our critters have always played at home, heck even the pygmy goats had herd alpha games. Do NOT EVER play head pushing games with a goat! Honest you're telling them you WANT to butt heads. This is a B A D THING! I'll have to tell you the story of the half Boer doe and the alpaca's attempt to challenge for herd alpha. It was a truly awesome of brief contest.

MERRY CHRISTMAS Rick! Look at all those babes! I'm feeling a bit of anvil envy here dontcha know.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

 

[rls1160]

Thank you Frosty,

Merry Christmas to you and your family.

 

Thank you George, it's going to be a cold couple of weeks coming up here in Wisconsin.  

Bundle up everyone 

[White Fox Forge]

I have 3 cats for my shop. Mostly used for mousing in my hay barn. They like to hang around the shop when I forge.

The orange one is Nigel Abudhabi, the grey one is Chaka and the brown one is Whiskey. 

 

[Scott NC]

  Those are some pretty cute mousers and they have interesting names...  I bet I can tell which one catches the most mouses.... 

[Indish Ironworks]

Here's my dog, Husker. Honestly, he's not much of a shop dog. He doesn't like loud noises so he usually doesn't stick around very long when I'm playing at the forge. Otherwise, he's a good boy.

[Michael]

This is Taco, about 12 lbs of Dachshund/Chihuahua. She's been accompanying me in the yard for most of her 14 years. It's her yard, as far as she's concerned. 

[Indish Ironworks]

It certainly looks like her yard.

Great looking dog!