Kitty scampers off when deer wants a snack

Up in Allagash, many locals feed deer. And apparently, other critters sometimes show interest in the piles of feed that are left to help the deer make it through the winter.

An unimpressed deer drives a cat away from a pile of food. (Sue Underhill Kelly photo)

On Thursday, I saw a post on the Tylor Kelly’s Camps Facebook page that I knew I had to share. I reached out to Sue Underhill Kelly, suspecting that she might have been the one who took the short clip.

In it, a young deer lets a house cat know that the kitty’s interruption of mealtime is not appreciated.

Sue promptly replied, and said she was, in fact, the person who watched the humorous scene play out, and captured the video, while visiting Mark McBreairty’s house in Allagash, the site of an extensive deer-feeding operation.

“[Mark] told me the cat frequently will rush the herd and scatter them,” she wrote. “This morning the deer were waiting for Mark to come outside and put feed down, I saw the cat sitting on top of marks car watching. Soon he jumped down and sauntered over to sniff around one of the old piles of feed and the little doe seemed to get possessive and drove the kitty away.”

Since I’m a trained journalist and (as a long-ago co-worker used to say) a “demon for detail,” I asked Sue the most important question of all.

What’s the cat’s name?

Sue didn’t know, and had to get back in touch with Mark to ask.

Turns out the cat’s name is … Cat.

 

John Holyoke

About John Holyoke

John Holyoke has been enjoying himself in Maine's great outdoors since he was a kid. Today, he's the Outdoors editor for the BDN, a job that allows him to meet up with Maine outdoors enthusiasts in their natural habitat. The stories he gathers provide fodder for his columns, and this blog.