Well, look what the cat dragged in...

These two boys, Fringe and Jet, are the two cats that we adopted from the Animal Shelter last October. After our last farm cat, Sweet Pea, went missing last summer we needed to get some farm cats to keep our rodent population in check. If you have any size farm that has livestock you are going to have livestock feed. Livestock feed gets spilled and attracts rodents. Cats are the answer.

These two spoiled "barn cats" can come and go from the house at will through a kitty door off the back of the house. This works well... most of the time. I like that they come into the house to eat (it keeps me from feeding the stray cats around), sleep (usually in my bed) and I like being able to see them everyday to make sure they are ok. What is not so great is the trophies that they bring back after a hunt.

I have removed dead mice, voles, squirrels, alive and dead birds, live wild rabbit kits, and recently, numerous lizards. So, it was no shock to me this afternoon when the kids yelled from the bedroom that there was yet another lizard in the house. I yelled back, "is it dead?" and I got a resounding "No!" from the kids. By the time I made it to the bedroom McKayla was holding the lizard and both her and Evan wanted to know if we could keep it as a pet.

My first reaction was to let it loose outside but after enduring the pleading of the kids I relented to keep it for "awhile" before letting it loose again. It just so happens that we have an unoccupied reptile cage setup complete with heat rock so that became its new temporary home.

Meet Izzie:
Izzie is about 7 inches long from nose to tip of tail. A quick search on the Internet told us that Izzie was an Eastern Fence Lizard. Their main diet is spiders (I like this lizard already) and other insects. So, Izzie is going to hang out with us for a bit so the kids can observe its behavior. We will then return it to the woods where hopefully it will avoid the cats in future!