Feral Cat Fridays: It’s Good To Be King, But Better To Be Foreman
Feral Cat Fridays honors Halloween today with a little glimpse into the lives of 2 black cats. Foreman, seen in the photo below, was an old, tough campaigner. He spent years challenging Uncle Ernie in a black hat vs. white hat duel for colony leader, but he was a nice guy when not involved in a power struggle. The second black cat in our little story is King. King might have become a George, but when King arrived another George would have been too confusing.
I’ll give Foreman his due in a later post. He was a long-time big guy in the colony and deserves his private time on the stage. King, always the interloper, arrived as an adult and kept to the colony periphery. Foreman made sure of that. King knew his place, as this little interchange shows.
As befits any Texas showdown, we have a coyote howling in the background and Scrabble, a peace-loving community member watching from the wings, or from under the Rosemary bush in this case.
George and Foreman are wonderful: hunky and self-assured. But I have to say I’m most taken with your coyote. It reminds me of another canine (and another George): George Rodrigue’s Blue Dog, modeled after the mythical Rougarou (or loup-garou) of the Louisiana swamps. Are you sure you have a coyote, and not the Hill Country version of the Rougarou?
Here’s some explanation of the myth.
Out of curiosity, do my embedded links show up for you in a different color, or should I add them as URLs?
To get the house cleaning out of the way first, your links show up fine (in blue). Thanks for the Rougarou link and legend. I was unfamiliar with it, despite living in Louisiana for a few years. (I graduated from high school in New Orleans and live in Mandeville, on the north side of the lake.) I am familiar with Rodrigue and Blue Dog, but (obviously) didn’t know about the Rougarou connection.
As to whether that’s a blue coyote or a Hill Country Rougarou, I’ll have to check that out with the folks in the garden department at HEB. The thing caught our eye one Saturday morning and we had to bring it home. It joined the Roadrunner from last Sunday’s post in the yard.
We also have an interesting Chupacabra on a bicycle and an odd creature we’ve come to call Toolbird, but they live inside because they are weather weenies. I can attest that it’s an authentic Chupacabra, because the guy that sold it to us told us so. Toolbird needs no certificate of authenticity because he’s made from a shovel and a pair of vice grip pliers, among other things.
What a menagerie! And what a great HEB you must have. Ours has rocking chairs and smokers, but I don’t remember any Chupacabrae — I’ll have to look more closely!
We do have a pretty good HEB in Boerne, but it was the blue coyote that came from HEB. The Chupacabra came from a little place in Bandera, I think it was called Wild West Imports, that is no longer there. The same man owned and ran it for many years but he retired and sold the business a few years ago. Talking with him was always as interesting as looking around his idiosyncratic collection of mostly Mexican imports. The building has been inactive lately, but I think they’re trying to get a rent-a-space craft business started there now.