Purebred Southern Ohio Porch Cats ... and Max!

What, you may ask, is a "porch cat?"	Well, let me tell you a little bit about porch cats.
You know that cat in your neighborhood who never seems to go home?	The one who looks like he survived a few rounds with Mike Tyson before he went down for the count?
Maybe resembles Bill the Cat, from the old Bloom County comic strips, a little?	The one who's always begging for something -- food, attention, a good swift squirt from the hose?
Do you, by any chance, have any idea just how that cat got there?	The odds are pretty good that cat got there by being dumped.
Once upon a time, that cat was every bit as cute a little kitten as any $800 purebred.	He was soft and fuzzy, he was playful, he was fun to be around.
In many cases, somebody thought he was cute enough to take home.	They provided, at the very least, a warm place for him to sleep and food to eat.
But, as is inevitable, eventually he ceased to be fuzzy, playful and cute; he was no longer quite as much fun to be around.	Maybe he poked a hole in the screen on a cold, rainy morning ... or piss-marked the couch to say "I'm a man, now!" because nobody had yet undertaken the time and expense to have him neutered.
Maybe she bit the baby, or gnawed a hole in a loaf of bread that was on the counter because nobody remembered to leave her any food, or scratched the sofa.	Maybe she hadn't been neutered, either, and got pregnant.
Maybe the kids kicked her, or threw firecrackers at her, or sicced a dog on her, or shot her with a BB gun, and she figured being on her own couldn't possibly be any worse, so she chose to run away before she was maimed (or worse).	For whatever reason, the door that was sometimes -- if not always -- open, and the hand that sometimes scratched her ears; put down food for him no longer served.
A porch cat is a cat nobody else wants anymore, usually for no better reason than that it's not a cute, fuzzy kitten anymore.	A porch cat, if it's reasonably lucky, will get by eating birds and vermin, and cadging out of your trash cans, until the ripe old age of five or six -- maybe seven -- before it dies of a disease or parasite or is hit by a car or killed by another animal (or human).
If it's reasonably unlucky, it will contract a disease or parasite early on, or be killed by a wild animal or a dog.	If it's very unlucky -- if one considers death unlucky, which is sort of a crapshoot when you're a porch cat -- animal control catches it and it's euthanized a few days later.
Euthanasia is, at least, usually performed humanely, in a warm, dry place.	Even animal control has the heart to give the cat a last meal before its death.
Not all porch cats reach so sad an end, though.	Four of them are here.
And so is Max.	He's actually a southeastern Indiana porch dog, but it can't be imagined that his story is any sweeter before he ended up in the shelter system.
Would you like to meet the porch cats (oh, yeah -- or Max)?	Please click on the links above, with their pictures.

	The continuing saga of a Midwestern household occupied (mostly benignly) by cats -- and now a dog -- since 1997. (Return to "The Dog Ate My Web Site")
Tink	Doodle
Gord	Squeek
Max