On Wednesday morning, I covered for Joe Rossetti on the Wicked Cool Morning Show, while he was doing radio business at the tippity top of the Pilgrim Monument in Provincetown. Unbeknownst to me - until he tole me the day before - one of my duties was to feed the feral cats in the iHeart parking lot at the crack of dawn. Joe Rossetti, Cat Lady. Who knew?
So before I went on the air to do my radio duties, like playing all the Cool Classics and telling you things you should know about music, local Cape Cod news, and other tidbits; I followed Joe's explicit instructions to put half a can of wet cat food into one side of each green bowl. He was supposed to leave me dry food, too, but I in my hazy early morning brain fog, I couldn't find it. I called for and looked for the cats, but they were nowhere to be found. Then I heard a kinda crass, croaky cat sound, which turned out to be a big, bold and bossy seagull. I told the bird to scram, and kept looking for the feral felines. I looked underneath one of the station vehicles, where they sometimes hide. And there it was, waiting for me - and the seagull that stuck around, too, to leave so it could eat in peace.
If I only I had known about the recent study of hungry, aggressive seagulls who steal food from humans: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2019.0405 The study reveals that the best way to shoo away these feathered foodies is to STARE. THEM. DOWN! It never crossed my mind that this was a reliable method, but next time I will give it a try.
Eventually the cat poked its head out from under the vehicle and approached the bowl of cat food. But as I tried to get a closer look at it, skittishly retreated. Joe told me they KNOW him, and come running whenever they hear him in the parking lot. Cat Lady, AND Cat Whisperer, apparently!