Knock, knock...

Meet House. Just 5 short months ago she looked like this. A scrappy little ball of fluff with wild hair growing out of her ears. She showed up at our farm after being rescued from the middle of the road, where she'd apparently been abandoned.
We named her after tv's Dr. House because of her standoffish nature, gray hair, and at first glance we thought she was male. Not so. But the name stuck regardless of gender.
In previous posts I've mentioned a terrorist kitten nicknamed Osama--Osama and House are one and the same. Don't let her cuteness deceive you. She is a terrorist tornado inside the house. Still, we like her and she is a part of the family. Besides, she is usually good for some entertainment.





This is House just a few months later. Still getting into trouble, but looking like an adult, even though she's still a youngster.
You can imagine our surprise when the scrappy little teenage barn kitten started getting unusually fat a few weeks ago. Surprise? More like shocked and horrified. We never even had a chance to explain the birds and the bees to her before House started this expansion project; before Osama started growing a sleeper cell right in our barn.

We didn't even know there were any tomcats in the area, which added to our surprise about House being "in a family way". (Who says that anymore anyway?)
But one day we went out to the barn and found this guy all cozy and moved-into our heated tack room. Better than that, this tomcat intimidated dogs and people out of the room. He looks sweet in this picture, but he's usually hissing and growling. We are fairly certain he is the father of House's kittens, given the timing of his arrival and the fact that he expresses great dislike for all living things except for House. And me.



Meet Max. When we ask the question, Who did this to our little girl?! he is the prime suspect. Mostly because he is the only suspect.
He's not a bad looking cat, for a cat. (I'm not a cat person)
We spent a few days knocking on the neighbors' doors trying to find his home. No dice.
Now Max quickly went the way of all of our "barn" cats...my mom brought him inside. (Of course he bit her on the way). He hissed and growled like a dang panther and had the dogs in a corner. So, I wasn't exactly sure what to make of him climbing into my lap and falling fast asleep. There was an occasional growl and hiss from the dozing feline. Then he got really comfortable and stretched out on me like a baby with his chin on my shoulder. Seriously, it feels like some sort of fatal attraction relationship. When he does that I'm afraid to move him or upset him.
We briefly discussed naming him Church, but decided there's no need to set ourselves up for some awful self-fulfilling Stephen King prophecy. Max he remains.

I made a point of tossing Max outside at night. For some reason, he knows how to work the cat door in and out of the tack room in the barn, but he is baffled by the cat door from the garage into the house. I know this because the other day I was helping our neighbor girl wash out the scrape on her hand where Max bit her (not badly) when all of a sudden we heard this horrific screaming noise. And then our old barn cat, Lily, came tearing through the cat door like her tail was on fire. She and Max got into it, but the cat door stopped him cold.

Mom brought Max in that night, too. He clobbered me with his fatal attraction affection again. I threw him out like normal. (This isn't cruelty, he has a cushy heated room all to himself in the barn) About 10 minutes later he showed up back in the house. Apparently he figured out the second cat door. Great. I felt like Fred Flintstone tossing the cat outside over and over again.

I went to bed, started reading and there he was. Max the stray cat waltzed into our house climbed onto my bed, laid on my chest, and went to sleep. When I tried to move him he growled. Since he'd proven himself rather persistent and I didn't care be scratched or bitten, I decided to play his game. And that is how I came to be held prisoner in my own bed by a stray cat that let himself into our house.