3:20 p.m. - 2006-07-06

Quandry of the feline kind

I�m in a bit of a quandary and need some advice.

Over the last several weeks a stray tom-cat has begun to make our back deck his home. He looks to be around 1 or 2 years old. He�s a very BIG BOY (in more ways than one), and � yes � I�ve named him. �Big� has the sweetest temperament of any cat I�ve ever come across, but definitely does not have a home. This cat is so placid that I can pick him up and lay him on his back to pet him. He sucks it all up joyfully!

We first discovered his visitations when I began to question our present cat �Digit� (she�s infamous on my Flickr account) about her sudden increase in eating. Then one morning Digit was acting a little odd just, outside my spare room door, so I peeked around the corner to see what she was so fascinated with. Low and behold there was �Big� (unnamed at this point) brazenly eating out of Digit food dish in the kitchen. He had obviously come in stealthily through her cat door and made himself at home. This was the dead-give-away that Digit was not in fact eating us out of house and home.

My cat lovin� heart breaks for the poor fellow. It was obvious that he was not being fed, his tummy being concave and all. I could not help myself, but began to feed him a little bit each day � outside on the deck of course.

Twice in the last two weeks we found him inside our house when we�ve woken up in the morning. And this morning � although we don�t know how he did manage to get in � we found that he�d begun to mark his territory � INSIDE.

I�d like to officially make him OUR cat, adopt him and have him neutered. T is not of the same frame of mind. Digit, our cat, . . . although her nose seems to be a little out of joint at the prospect of our (alright � MY ) divided attention(s) she really hasn�t put up much of a fuss over �Big� being around.

What should we do? Adopt? Or ��

(I�ve already called our vet and a friend who is a vet to get the costs on neutering. We�re looking at around a $150 bill.)

Help!!