s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

Well, in our case it would be Alpaca and Housecats, but anyway…

Yesterday I was feeding out some supplements to our alpaca, as Pointer has gotten a bit thin from the poor winter grass and the cold conditions of the last 2 months. We want our alpaca fat and happy! During this feeding they had a very interesting encounter with Rasputin.

Now, most books on alpaca talk about how they are fascinated by cats. How they “love” them. At which point we would insert “yes they love them… on toast for breakfast!” Oak had decided that the little mini-pumas were threats, to be chased out of the paddock (and probably trampled if caught). This has made the cats rightly nervous around the big furry paddock-demons. But Oak spent 3 weeks with another little herd while we were in the US, in a place whre he was not boss and there were lots of other animals about (chickens, pigs, cats and dogs), and this seems to have changed him.

The first evidence of this change was when they were greedily eating their “yums” and Rasputin slunk by. They looked up at him (about 10 m away), then went back to their feed. Interesting. Later Rasputin came over and lay on the bank behind me, demanding love (rolling on his back and presenting belly). Oak came over to check it out. So long as I was between the two, Rasputin remained quite calm, and Oak seemed merely curious, not agressive. Very interesting.

We hope this a sign of things calming down. Now we just have to hope that the new animals coming in “get the memo” that cats are not evil. We shall see.