Right, time to do something about this blog. I’m going to try for Saturday morning posts, to at least get into a routine.

Anyway. It so happens that in the autumn of last year, we had holes cropping up left and right across our land. Rats. This is a farm, not a golf course. Besides, holes are an occupational hazard. Just ask Starfish, whose metatarsal rued the day she dashed out of the house to assist a goat, of which more hereafter. (It turned out to be a false alarm, but I digress.)

So. How to deal with varmints, as the locals like to call them? Pigs root up the land, but we haven’t seen pigs near the house since we got our livestock guardian dogs. They’re still around. Clearly, the hole-makers were something small. Gophers, I’m told, or moles, or voles, or something cute, furry, and insanely destructive.

More dogs were an option. Something like a West Highland Terrier. But these are stupidly expensive, and one has to train them, and keep them inside when not, as it were, in use. Besides, terriers are well known to run off in hot pursuit of something. We live on a sealed road that’s relatively busy for such a quiet rural area. It’s far from the house (about 300 metres), but not so far that a terrier couldn’t single-mindedly run out onto it and get hit. Of course improved fencing with dig barriers is an option to keep the dog in, but then the up-front costs are really starting to mount up.

On the other hand, East Texas has a massive unwanted kitten problem. It’s the usual thing: Spaying female cats is costly. To add to the problem, many vets won’t do it until the female is six or seven or even eight months old, by which time at least one pregnancy may well have already happened. So there are stray cats in need of a home.

And cats make excellent hunters, and don’t tend to run off. Plus, they’re effectively free to acquire. And there’s no need to get one of a particular breed. Any moggy will do. (Moggy: New Zealand term, probably from Scottish English, for a non-pedigree domestic cat.)

It turned out, back in January, that there were a few dumped cats that had appeared. One, in particular, was two kittens who had been found by a business owner near Longview, Texas, in a cardboard box outside her premises. These poor cats had been left there with no food or water. For what purpose I don’t exactly know. I’m not sure who the dumpers had hoped would find them, or why there as opposed to an animal shelter.

Still, ours not to reason why. We picked them, and a third cat in similar circumstances, up, and brought them home.

Six months later, we’re being constantly presented with little dead things, chiefly rodents.

On the other hand, I’m looking frustratedly at my headphone cable, which I made the mistake of not folding up and putting away. We have three more inside animals that are cute, furry, and insanely destructive.

And we see how God takes care of even the (initially) neglected and unwanted. “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father.” — Matthew 10:29