Gerrard and hiking with Callie

In addition to the pack of dogs, our home also has Gerrard. He is often referred to as The Wonder Kitty since it's a wonder he survived his few weeks.  

It was over six years ago that I found him out in the wilderness while walking with Cairo. He was a tiny little kitten whose eyes weren't open.  There was no sign of Momma Cat, no nest, no litter mates.  Home he came, to be fed every few hours with a syringe of kitten milk replacer (KMR) and fussed over by Cairo, who became his surrogate mother.  At the time of his first vet visit, his age was estimated to be four or five days old.  

Gerrard is somewhat of a nature vs nurture experiment.  He's not the attention demanding cat that most people thought he would be.  He's not much of a lap cat, he prefers to not be fussed over and usually likes to be left alone. He does, however, let the dogs know when he's had enough of their attention. Hiker is the one who likes to pester him.

Hiker and Gerrard

The weather lately has gone from a few inches of snow to really warm, melting all the snow and then back to cold with a dusting of snow. At least with the cold, the ground went from soft mushy mud to frozen mud.  Much easier for hiking, so out we went!

Callie was smelling or hearing something during the first part of our walk.  As I was taking this picture, she was staring intently and huffing occasionally but I didn't see or hear anything.  I told her that since we were only ten minutes north of town, I wasn't too worried.  Now, if we were out in the true wilderness, I'd be concerned about bears. 

Typical Callie gave me that, "I warned you" look.

Whatever it was, it didn't bother her for long and then we were on our way.

This is where she usually jumps in for a swim, but it was frozen over. 

The creek adjacent to this was still flowing.

There were quite a few areas of standing water along the trail that were frozen but then we came to one that wasn't frozen but had a slightly greenish/gray tinge to it.  Callie "asked" to go in and I said no way! There was something in that water preventing it from freezing so stay out!

We found some other water that looked more normal so in she went.

Then it was time to head for home to let the others out to play.

Forest being tough, Azule not taking him seriously.