Chronos, yea for your Mom. A place for animals to go when the cold sets in. Food or not, a comfortable place to sleep. I approve.
I remember one neighborhood of mine where their were a few, maybe 4-5 stray cats and the neighbors father was a vet and once a year when he would visit his daughters family they would round up the strays and he would give them whatever shots they needed.
Funny story, My very religious FIL was the neighborhood stray catcher. He has live box traps. He would arm them with canned (expensive) salmon. I don’t know the exact numbers, but it was a bunch. He would take them to a very philanthropic minded vet office. They would fix them up and rehome them.
One birthday we got him a T-shirt that said “Neighborhood Pussy Hunter”. Being devout, of course he never wore it
We thought we were very funny by doing it.
He was not amused.
Six Dinner Sid
Actually, I did encounter a “community dog” – when I was an undergrad at MIT there was a dog that made regular rounds of the offices every day, collecting a treat at each. I passed her one day as she trudged along the basement corridor, walking alongside her, and she gave me an upward glance that said “What are YOU looking at?”
I once visited a chemical plant that had a plant dog, named Plant Dog. I had no idea about it until I was wandering out in the field tracing some lines, when I realized this friendly mutt was following me. He followed me around for a few hours, and came along when I went back to the plant offices. I tentatively asked “Um, there’s this dog…” and the whole thing got explained. He lived in the plant, got fed by the guards (and stopped by the lunchroom for treats), and just generally roamed around checking things out. They actually liked having him around, as he chased off birds from nesting in the process equipment, or geese trying to brood by the water pond.
Nowadays all our plants have strict policies requiring fire-resistant clothing in the field, so Plant Dog wouldn’t pass muster. When they closed that plant, I believe he went home with one of the security guards. No idea if he got a pension for all his work.
My brother’s university dorm block had a cat. About half the students finished up their degrees with a part bag of kitty treats somewhere in the back of a drawer.
It spent a lot of time in my brother’s dorm, because they used to keep the window open for a squirrel which liked to snooze on the radiator whenever it got cold… I don’t think the cat and squirrel got on though.
A LONG time ago – probably 45 years ago, when I was a child – we moved to a little farmhouse property in rural Illinois. The house we moved into had a dog who “conveyed” – like an appliance, he came with the house. Albert, a floppy but muscular Beagle-Bassett cross, ate at our place but mostly wandered the neighborhood. He even preferred to sun himself on the blacktop in the middle of the road. Locals knew to slow down and drive around him (or even over him) carefully. At the time, we were far less conscientious about protecting our animal family members, so for some reason we tolerated this. Fortunately one day Albert woke up as some vehicle was straddling him and bumped his head on the underside of the vehicle. He got a little scar and stopped sleeping in the road.
Albert would often bring back trophies he found in the neighborhood. His grand prize was an entire fresh cooked turkey – carving knife jauntily stuck into it – that some neighbor had failed to vigilantly defend, probably from a picnic table or back porch. My mom kept the (perfectly good) knife for years. We never found out who Albert had robbed; obviously we couldn’t go around openly asking people.
When we eventually moved away, Albert conveyed to the new owners of the property.
My mom lives in the country in North Carolina and there was a neighbor’s dog who would come by daily to visit. He’d hang around until my mom said “Hello Black Dog” and then it would move on to its next location.
Also, not quite the same but when I was stationed in Turkey we had a few Det (detachment) dogs, one or two at a time. They would meander around post and get their heads scratched and food from the soldiers. One time we took one of them along during drivers training and it threw up in the back of the pick up we were all in. In hindsight, possibly not the best idea.
I had Ernie. White mutt with one black eye patch and a cropped tail, little guy.
I lived in a tiny tiny town upstate NY. Ernie knew everyone and everyone knew Ernie. Way before leash laws. When I walked down the street with Ernie, people who didn’t know me from Adam said “Hi, Ernie.”
Ernie was an unneutered lover and once a woman called to tell me he’d fathered a littler with her bitch. Preparing for the worst, I said tentatively “oh really?” but she was thrilled and just called to see if I wanted a puppy.
Funny story, up state NY gets a ton of snow. Once I was walking in the street (sidewalks were impassible) with Ernie and he got too far into the street. And got hit by a car. I screamed, people ran over. Ernie dug himself out of the snowpack he’d been pushed into and kept on keeping on.
Some years later, Ernie decided he preferred a different family to mine. All good.
I used to live in a nearby city called Takoma Park, MD. I lived there after he was gone, but there had been a rooster, named “Roscoe,” who wandered the streets freely for most of the 90s. He was eventually run over but the community built a statue in his honor in the center of town. There’s also a pretty good pizza/Italian joint named after him a not far from the statue.
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When I lived in Texas, we had a neighborhood cat named Sneaker, who lived wherever he liked whenever he liked. Sneaker was a cool guy. The most amazing thing about him was that he loved to eat fire ants. He’d seek out a mound and start lapping those fuckers up. Unfortunately, Sneaker had been neutered, and so mankind lost the chance to develop a breed of fire-ant-eating cats.
I think my cat is a “town dog.” Neighbors text me occasionally to make sure he didn’t run away (my number is on his collar). He’s apparently incredibly friendly and he roams the whole neighborhood. I’ve caught him eagerly rushing into garages yowling for attention or lazing about like he owns the place under neighbors’ cars.
One time I drove up to him, caught him in a neighbor’s front yard just chillin’, called out his name, and he meowed some recognition sounds at me and hurried home like he knew he was in trouble. (He wasn’t.)
I wish he did some amazing thing like steal potato chips from the gas station every day, but really he’s just a big lazy dolt that loves everyone. Not your average cat behavior, though.