Introducing Bear.

Following on from my weather report ha ha. I found these on my camera, they were taken on 15/06/09, the day we went to Hastings.

This is Bear, he's our stray cat friend, and so very wild. He turned up in our garden last summer, I feed a family of foxes, I have done for years and it gives me great joy. So every night I would put food out on the deck and the family would come to have tea. I will tell you about Mensa the fox one day soon, he's a member of our fox family and very smart hence the name Mensa. Bear would wait in the bushes until they were done and then come and fed, so I started to feed him as well.

So it was about this time last year that I first noticed Bear, he's a real tomcat, still got his bits in the gentleman's department, so he's heavy weight and tough as old boots, although Misty has bopped him a few times, but hey! it is her garden, so she is entitled to be a bit put out by him; he has certainly learnt some manners in the last year, well he needed to, all that hissing and spitting and that was just at me. Misty has taught him a few manners.

Well slowly over the last year I have got a bit closer and he now comes up to the patio doors and I have just started to be able to stroke him, although he does still flinch a bit and sometimes he hisses at me, but not often now, as I tend to take his food away if he does hiss at me and wait till he calms down, before I give it back. He turns up nearly every day and often stays for a while, lying near the patio door, I think he likes the company at times.

You may wonder why he is called Bear, well for a start he is very muscular and has huge shoulders (from fighting I suppose) and he swaggers when he walks. I was going to call him Teddy, because if you look at his cute little face his eyes are rather close together like a Teddy bear. However the men of the family said that to call a big,wild, swaggering, henchman of a cat Teddy was deeming to him, hence the name Bear, much more macho according to the men of the family.

I am hoping that during this summer and the autumn that I will be able to tame him a bit more, as I would happily take him in, but he still has away to go in the manners department, although he and Misty are now getting on better and have stopped sniping at each other, they actually lay fairly close together and Misty will tolerate him,but is quick to let him know she is still top cat in this household.


This was Bear in the snow we had early this year, he wouldn't come near the house in those days, but I managed to coax him into sleeeping in our shed.