A place at the table

If you have ever left pet food of any sort sitting outside, you know you can't leave it unattended for long.  Whether dog or cat food either one, if it isn't directly providing for the animal you intended, it will soon enough be providing for a host of other opportunistic feeders.

Meet Socks, a feral cat who adopted our family in November of 2012. She won't come in the house or let us pet her, but she spends most of the day hanging around the garden beds and back deck, supervising our outdoor activities.

I keep bird feeders stocked with seed, front and back. Rather than have those turn into some sort of feral kitty snack bar, the second or third time Socks showed up I decided to put cat food and water out for her in hopes of keeping her well fed and dampening her natural predatory response.  Socks would eat a varying amount each time, but she very often left a few cat food pellets in her bowl.

As the weeks turned into months, I stopped watching closely every time after I'd put the cat's food outside and often enough I didn't bring the food bowl with its left over pellets back inside promptly. This meant the cat's bowl became a regular enough food source to attract the usual scavengers of a slightly larger sort.

And more recently, the few remaining cat food pellets regularly left over in the bowl have begun to attract attention from an unexpected source.

How much does this dove want that cat's food?

I've watched this particular little drama unfold several times over the past few days.  This cat has never shown signs of aggression towards anything in our yard.  But this is a tolerant attitude I'd never expected.

Now that I know Socks won't defend her food, I try to pay closer attention and get the bowl back inside whenever she has finished eating.  Those cat food pellets are chicken based, and whether or not it might mean anything to that dove to know it is scarfing down a fellow fowl?  I find it a little unsettling.