I've seen animals behave in strange ways, but this one, in my opinion, topped all others. It all began late one evening when I heard a pitiful cry near the road. Upon investigating, I found a snow white kitten which appeared to be around three months old. It was very friendly, but scared and lonely. I tried to introduce it to our fourteen other cats but they would have no part of the poor little thing. They hissed, spit, growled, and swatted at it; clearly showing their hostility. After feeding it, I went inside for the night, leaving it on the porch. The next morning, once again I heard this pitiful cry so I began searching for the kitty. Finally, I realized the cry was coming from our hickory tree. I tried to coax it into climbing down but to no avail. I thought of our tall ladder, but my husband assured me when the animal grew hungry enough, it would figure out a way down.

Sure enough, later that day, here was the white cat, but he was not alone. He had found three friends and no, they were not some of our other cats. It was our three guineas. We watched them and it was obvious they had accepted him and he was pleased to have their company. We put a dish of cat food for the kitty and shelled some corn on the ground for the guineas. To our surprise, they finished the corn before the cat finished his food and they waited patiently for it to finish. Then the four friends paraded off together.

The next night I mentioned the hickory tree where the cat was stuck happened to be the same tree the guineas always roosted in. We didn't bother to look for we just knew that cat would never go up that tree again. Several nights passed and the thought continued to nag me until one night I told my husband I just had to get a light and look. He went with me, I guess to laugh at me for having such a silly nothing. Lo and behold! We beamed our flashlight up to the high limb where the guineas were roosting and there were four critters; three guineas and one snow white cat. It was lying on the limb between two of the guineas with its little white tail sticking straight up in the air. Its two front paws were wrapped around the limb as far as they could reach, hanging on for all it was worth.

The guineas didn't seem to mind at all, sharing their roosting limb with a cat. We both agreed that it was unbelievable, but we know what we saw! The kitty's name is Guinea-Cat and yes, we are waiting for it to start saying “Pot-Rack, Pot-Rack” or for the guineas to start meowing.