Stray cats, and other backyard wildlife

I like our little backyard. It has a few citrus trees, a fig tree, and a nice block wall around the perimeter. If I were a cat, it would be an it be an ideal place to hang out. Several of the stray cats in our neighborhood agree with me.

Normally, I am indifferent toward the strays. Once in Tempe, one of them wandered into my house when I had the door open, made himself at home for a while, ignored me, and then left. 'Live and let live', I say.

Becky takes a more proactive approach. She likes to feed them, and she would hug them if they would let her.

"They are wild animals," I would tell her. "They like to hunt, so let them eat the pigeons." But over time, I will admit, my feelings changed. Perhaps I've been drinking the cat Kool-Aid. I have become interested in their behavior and enjoy watching them out the window in the morning as they eat their Meow Mix while we eat our Grape Nuts.

This picture below is Fluffy P. Kitty, I think. I'm not sure because there is at least one other cat with the exact same color pattern. This I know only because I used to see both of them together sometimes. The other one would presumably be Fluffy Q. Kitty (Becky's names, not mine). But anyway, I think over time one of them established our backyard as his domain and the other one moved on. So we'll call him Fluffy P., for short.

Fig. 1. Fluffy P. Kitty (Felis catus) on the roof, a strategic position for overseeing his domain.

As I was saying, our backyard was pretty much Fluffy P.'s lap of luxury for a while - free food, shady trees, no dogs, etc. That was until Striper came along a few months ago. Here's a picture of Striper.

Fig. 2. Striper (Felis catus) surveys the territory as he prepares to establish his dominance.

As you can see, he looks a bit less domesticated - like a wild cat. He's also bigger; I think he might be part jaguar. I heard there was one of those found living in Arizona this year. Experiments have shown that Striper appears to be unintimidated by my iguana stuffed animal, whereas Fluffy P. won't go near it.

Fig. 3. Experimental data and simulations indicate that Striper has a high tolerance for reptilian intimidation.

Anyway, we heard a couple cat fights and after that didn't see Fluffy P. around so much anymore. But soon enough he started dropping by occasionally again when Striper wasn't around. Now it seems they have a balanced tolerance for each other. But if they are both in the backyard at the same time when we feed them, Fluffy P. always defers to Striper to eat first. That seems to be the law of the jungle.

There are other things living in our backyard too. When we first moved in to this place, we noticed an odd knocking sound in the mornings. It was coming from the roof, so at first I thought it was the air conditioner or maybe some other appliance, but that didn't really make sense.

Then one morning as I was getting into my car to leave for work, I heard the sound from outside the house, and there it was - a woodpecker on the apex of the roof. Here is a some photographic evidence of him in the backyard.

Fig. 4. The Arizona Woodpecker (Picoides arizonae). The red marking above the eyes indicates this individual is male.

We also have hummingbirds, which is not unusual. Actually, Arizona is the hummingbird capital of the U.S. - there are more species of hummingbird here than anywhere else. Here is one partaking from our feeder.

Fig. 5. A Black-chinned hummingbird (Archilochus alexandri) drinking nectar.

One time a hummingbird flew into our house when the door was open. I left the door open hoping it would leave on its own accord like that cat did, but instead more of them flew in. I spent the morning chasing them around with a rake to get them out of the house. We have a high ceiling, so it was total insanity.

Fig. 6. Two hummingbirds invited themselves into the house, and refused to leave.

There is a Desert Tortoise adoption program that the state Fish and Wildlife Department runs. I'd love to add one of those to the backyard, but that's kind of a long-term commitment and I don't know how much longer we will be here. But if we weren't renting and we were putting our roots down, then I'd be all over that.

Fig. 7. The backyard habitat.