One of my Buddhist teachers has said that there is much merit to be gained by giving even a mouthful of food to a hungry animal.
By this standard, my mother didn't just have "much" merit—she must have had literally tons of it, because she didn't just feed by the mouthful, she fed by the trough.
When she was dying, I promised my mom I would take care of the small group of feral cats she had been feeding for several years. You can see some of them in the picture, above, happily gaining sustenance from a couple of the troughs on the back patio at my parents' house.
The little tortoiseshell girl is Hortense, who telepathed her name to Forrest one day. It suits her well; we sometimes spell her name HorTENSE. Her nickname, of course, is Horty the Torty. (It had to happen.)
Assuming that reading about cats doesn't put you totally off of this blog, you will no doubt learn more about the ferals and their progress—and some are progressing quite nicely toward becoming housecats—as time goes on.
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