Is our cat best friends with a pet deer?

[Moonbear]

Actually they are Western Black Tail. Oregon has a very small White Tail population, they are localized in a valley about 100mi south of here. Our Black Tails are small, less the 100lbs dressed, often way less then 100 lbs. If you go to the other side of the Cascade mountains you will find a much larger Mule Deer.

Maybe it's the lighting, but the deer in the pictures don't look like they have black tails (the distinctive characteristic of black-tailed deer, not surprisingly). Other than that, it's pretty hard to tell white-tails from black-tails, at least for me .

Well, if they are black-tails, then those aren't such a vermin as white-tails, so we won't turn them into venison. Tsu can watch for fawns.

I'd say the more immediate concern is the cat getting stomped.

Deer seem to know house cats can't really do anything to them. When I worked with deer, we had a stupid, highly annoying, loud barn cat that we thought we'd find stomped one day, but he seemed to wander among the deer all he wanted and they didn't really care. They can move a lot faster than the cat if they want to be left alone.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Okay we have a solution. If this is a male, when the antlers start getting large I'm going to have Tsu go out and put little rubber tips on the ends.


[Reminds me a bit of how my grandpa told me to catch birds: Just put a little salt on their tail.]

 

[hypatia]

I think she will need some practise...say, finger cots at 40 paces?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Tonight I walked out the back door of the house and caught a doe playing with two of our cats, and only about five feet away. Of course as soon as the door shut she saw me and ran for cover; with two cats right behind her.

So now they are up to the door. What's next? Of course it beats skunks.

I once met a woman who, while taking a leisurely bath one day, looked up to see a baby Brahma Bull standing in the doorway of the bathroom and watching her.

 

[Evo]

I once met a woman who, while taking a leisurely bath one day, looked up to see a baby Brahma Bull standing in the doorway of the bathroom and watching her.

Brahma's are well known voyeurs.

 

[revelator]

Last year the cats brought skunks into the house...

Was it a romantic, Pepe le Pieu, kind of rendezvous?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Was it a romantic, Pepe le Pieu, kind of rendezvous?

We don't know of any funny business, but cats and skunks do really like each other. Well...that was until they met Bun. Until now our cats and the skunks liked to hang out, but Bun [barely a year old] is so high energy that she seems to have run them all away. I would see her chasing them all around my office, and then, one day, they were gone.