Do I have what it takes?

A year ago yesterday I blogged about Animal Planet's Meerkat Manor and the fact that the second season was being elusive. The third season started a few weeks ago and we are once again attentive. But this year is harder: bad things are happening to our Whiskers family and the other meeerkat groups. It's a meerkat-kill-meerkat world in the Kalahari where survival is all we have on our minds.

So, how do the teams of researchers and film makers handle it? They set the cameras up and let them roll, let Nature and meerkat take their courses. There's even a disclaimer to that fact at the beginning of the half-hour. Meerkat Manor is not for the faint-hearted.

Our backyard is a crossroads for the feline population. Two years ago I adopted a stray kitty who was being abused monthly by the neighborhood tomcats. It took me two months of bribing her with food to get her close enough to the house to trap her. I had her spayed and inoculated. Amazingly, when I returned her to the backyard, she got over her snit and has stayed with me, finally allowing me to stroke her back and scratch behind her ears.

All was well, just she and me, until said neighborhood toms noticed where the freebie food was. Over the course of the last year, they all stop by for breakfast. They'll laze in the garden or on the furniture. They are, for tomcats, well-mannered. I do not attempt to adopt them.

There is also a female in the group, a calico we've named Duchess. I think she originated across the street because she wanders from food bowl to food bowl. She is in the family way every chance she gets. Last year, she wore herself out ferrying kittens between my house and her official home. Neither human could grab her and see that she ceased her prolific ways.

This years has been no different, although she no longer runs from me. I have hopes of nabbing her when her litter (location unknown until an hour ago) is large enough not to need her.

From my study window, I look down onto the backyard. And who should I see clutching a kitten in her mouth and disappearing under the lantana but Duchess. And who is entering the yard right behind her? A tom. He took her exact path to the bushes and stopped. I'd no doubt Duchess would defind her litter, but for how long could she hold out? He marked the bushes by spraying and then left. She emerged and took up a sentinel position.

I could stand it no longer, so I went down. She was now on the back steps. I gave her food and scurried over to check on the kittens. Last week there had been four of them when she'd given them a temporary stop in the rose bushes (the sprinkler system flushed them out on Monday morning). Today there are three. Has one died? Is she waiting for an all-clear to go get it?

Can I stand by and watch tomcats circling her litter and not interfere? Should Nature take its course? Duchess is not a first-time mama and she is bound to be savvier about the location of her 6 week old brood than I am, but do I have what it takes to be an impartial observer?