Blue Jay Adventures

Earl and I were sitting on the front porch when we saw a fledgling blue jay flop into the street. The parents screeched down urgently. Some other blue jay relatives flew down also screeching. A cardinal landed nearby and a robin added its trill too. All urging the baby blue jay to fly, to get out of the middle of the street.
As the birds flew back to the tree, the baby blue jay flopped around some more.
Earl pulled on his shoes.
"Don't go down there," I warned. "They'll dive bomb you."Nevertheless, he went down the 24 steps and tried to shoo the bird toward the curb. One of the blue jay parents attacked Earl's head.

This photo is from the FCPS website. 

He picked up a stick and waved it over his head to keep the birds away.
"Come help me," he called.
"No," I refused.
"Come on."
So I reluctantly joined him.
"You want to scoop up the bird or swing the stick?"
"I'm swinging the stick," I decided.
So without further incident, Earl cupped his hands and lifted the fuzzy gray and blue bird into the grass just past the curb.
We retreated to the porch and watched the bird hop around. The parents landed beside it, occasionally flying back up to overhead tree branches.
I examined Earl's head where the blue jay had attacked him. "Looks like he got you with his feet," I said. Two bloody scratches pierced his scalp. I dabbed at them with a cotton ball soaked in alcohol.
I didn't think about the fallen blue jay again until about an hour later after Earl had gone to work. Suddenly, I heard the blue jays screeching and screeching in the backyard. I rushed back there and found our outdoor cat Tupi nudging the fledgling with his nose.
"Tupi!" I yelled, clapping my hands and running into the yard to grab the cat. I deposited him inside the door and called over to the neighbor for advice.

Tupi taking refuge in the house.

Sarah had been gardening all day. She had on a canvas hat and gloves. She didn't hesitate to come to the backyard and scoop the baby bird into a grocery bag then carry him to the neighbor's garden inside a high fence.
The blue jay parents, for some reason, did not notice their baby in the backyard or being transferred to the neighbor's garden.
After we deposited the baby in the garden, I let the cat out the front door, hoping he'd forget about the baby bird. He may have forgotten, but the blue jay parents did not. They were waiting by the front porch and immediately started to scream at the cat. He crouched in the dirt by the porch and they dive bombed him. He slunk around, trying to escape their notice, but within a few minutes he was back at the door wanting inside. His ears were flattened out on either side of his head in fear.
A few minutes later, he wanted out the back door. Again the blue jays found him and tortured him. He settled in the house, standing by the screen door and a blue jay alighted on the porch railing, scolding Tupi.I was starting to feel bad for him.
A few hours later, he was in the backyard and  he came running up to greet me and Grace. The other cat, also black, doesn't usually go out, but I let him loose to see if the blue jays could tell the difference. They couldn't. They flew over the yard, zooming down to intimidate the innocent cat who couldn't figure out why these sky predators were attacking him.
I don't know if the parents ever found the baby blue jay, but I do know that Tupi's summer is now ruined. Every time he goes outside, the birds follow him screeching.
I just hope they don't remember what Earl looks like next time he goes in the backyard.

Cat Freedom

We're trying a little experiment at my house and it seems to be working.
About a week ago, I started letting our older cat outside. He's been an indoor cat since he came home to us about six years ago. Tupi is the elegant tuxedo cat with the giant paws that have extra toes.
He's always been pretty laid back, but in the past year or so, he started peeing outside the litter box. At least that's what we thought when we would find cat pee. And how would we find the cat pee? The younger cat would go to the spot and scrape around it, like he was trying to cover it with cat litter.
We took Tupi to the vet again and again. He gave him shots of antibiotics for a urinary tract infection. We paid $50 per bag for special urinary tract health cat food. All to no avail.
Finally we started to see Tupi pee. He didn't squat down like he would in the litter box, instead, he stood straight up and his tail quivered as he peed.

Perhaps if we hadn't dressed him up as a chicken for Halloween
one year, he wouldn't have misbehaved.

I found an article at Cornell University that described this exact action and called it "spraying." Of course, Tupi has been fixed, but according to Cornell, about 10 percent of male cats that have been fixed can spray. Weren't we lucky to be among the 10 percent. Then I started to correlate the spraying with the times that Tupi did it. Mostly, it was in the morning when the outdoor cats were traipsing over to the neighbor's house for breakfast. She made a habit of feeding all the stray cats.
Some of the outdoor cats didn't seem to bother Tupi. He'd sit on the other side of the screen from a long-haired gray and white cat while they batted at each other. But one particular cat drove him crazy.
This cat was black and white, just like him. Maybe he felt like he was seeing himself enjoy freedom.
So when we had a little spare money, Earl and I went to Petco and bought Tupi and handsome purple collar with little white paw prints. We had a purple heart engraved with our phone number and address. We left the bell on his collar as a warning to any birds he might be chasing. We put the collar around Tupi's neck and we let him outside.
He was hesitant at first, afraid we'd scoop him up and plop him back in the house. After a while, he found a patch of dirt and rolled in it. He crouched on one side of the chain link fence and growled at the dogs next door.
He has seemed to adjust. Most of the time he spends lying in the yard, surveying his kingdom. One day I found him lying on the porch swing with his friend the white and gray cat lying in the chair next to him.
I haven't seen him spray and haven't smelled any evidence of it.
I guess he just wanted to get outside and protect the house from the other cats that prowled around.
Now, I just have to figure out how to explain to the younger cat that he doesn't get to go outside unless he starts acting up. Some parenting lesson, huh?