This morning had already warmed up to -3C when I went outside to put feed out.  T-shirt weather!  Yay!

Which means I’m also leaving the inside door open more often.  Our indoor cats like to look outside through the screen door (which doesn’t actually have a screen in it).

Walking past to feed the deer, I found this…

My brother had come by the other day, followed by his beautiful, shy dog.  If you look at him, the dog will avert his gaze while still looking at you from the corner of his eyes.  He’ll come up behind us to sniff our fingers, but if we turn to look at him or try to pet him, he runs away.

When he saw the cats in the window, however, he came right over.  He likes cats – the ones at my brothe’rs, as well as the ones here.  To him, these are clearly new friends!

Our cats, not to much! *L*

With no screen in the door, I opened the window just a bit.  With a door in between us, his usual shyness disappeared, and he immediately stuck his nose into the opening to sniff at our mama cat.  DaBoy ran off. :-D  Our mama cat ended up hissing and spitting at him before running off, which actually seemed to hurt the dog’s feelings!  He looked so sad!

So I opened the window enough that I could reach through – and he let me pet him!  This is the first time he’s let me do more than touch him since we’ve moved out here.  Through the window, however, I was able to give him a good, long scritching under the ears.  Then my younger daughter came by, and he let her pet him, too.

At some point, we’re going to get this dog to accept us as new friends. :-)

Speaking of new friends, my daughters saw the new cat again – peaking through their window upstairs!  They accidentally startled it before they realized what they were seeing in the window, and it ran off across the roof.

Wherever this cat came from, it seems we might have another regular visitor!

The Re-Farmer