Our beloved Fritzybubby.

There was no ‘Sun’ in our day today. Yesterday we had 3 chooks and 1 cat. Today, we have 3 chooks buried in our vege patch, and 1 missing Fritz. We woke up this morning and something had got into our yard. We suspect it was a fox. The chooks were all headless; feathers scattered across the yard. Our chooks are were very friendly, and very very docile, so from what we can see there wasn’t much of a struggle. Going by the feather trail, they were probably woken sometime early this morning while roosting in their wire hutch. One was killed near the hutch, the other two at the other end of the backyard. It’s pretty common for chooks to die as a result of fox entry; they have wiped out our flocks before on two other occasions. We’re pretty sad though; they were really good chooks and like all chicken’s we’ve raised they were saved from a battery setup. So they had a good life for the 2 years they were with us, but it’s still really sad.

With the chooks buried, we went to go investigate whether Fritz was Ok. And sadly, we still have no idea. It’s currently 6pm and we haven’t seen Fritz all day. He has never stayed away for this long; he always comes in for a sleep in the afternoon, especially when it’s cold like today. We have a few theories.. the worst is that the fox got the cat too, and has taken the body away somewhere. The other also-bad theory is that the fox chased the cat away and Fritz is lost and/or injured somewhere far enough away that he’s not responding to our calls. My Mum’s more optimistic theory is that he’s gone off on an adventure somewhere in the neighbourhood and will probably come back.

I guess all we can do is wait and hope he’s Ok.

Update: Sunday, 11pm – 24hours since we last saw Fritz. Not looking hopeful; but fingers crossed he might show up in the morning. Not sure he’s anywhere near us though – one of his rival cats was eating the food we left out for him earlier. And with some coaxing, the cat even stuck around for a pat. Poor Fritzy If you’re still alive, I hope you get my message by human-to-cat telepathy that I hope you’re ok and please come back!!

The early days

“Are you my Mummy?”

On his favourite sunny windowsill

All grown up

Update #2: FRITZ IS ALIVE!!! and also now a permanently an indoors cat once again. He was picked up on our street by a ranger, with little details given to us about where or why. His tag is missing, which is weird, because the little metal ring that held it on is still on his collar, and crimped together well enough that it wouldn’t have allowed the thickness of the name-tag to squeeze through. Looks to me like its been removed by someone. And if so, I’m pretty sure who did it. Our neighbour hates cats. But no point theorizing now. The $50 that was going to pay for a nice tasty birthday lunch instead went towards getting the cat out from the pound. But what can I say – it’s the price you pay for love. And after going into the pound I’m glad we went to see if he was there – that place is truly sad and awful. Cement floors, no cushioning, cold, and all the pets in there are so lonely and sad. If the world was ideal, and I owned the pound, I’d employ someone just to go play with them all.