There has been some recent unpleasantness in our immediate neighborhood (with which we, luckily, are not involved), and the village animal control officer tipped us off that one of the parties stands under suspicion of shooting at cats that trespass in his back yard. As of Sunday, ours are restricted to quarters until further notice.
You can imagine this has proved to be a very unpopular edict and one difficult to enforce. Reserve Cat has already escaped once (they double-teamed me at the front door when I went out to get the mail). Fortunately he is a sweet and trusting soul and allows himself to be captured by the promise of a belly-rub; since it is beyond his comprehension that humans are capable of any more lethal activity.
So far he seems to be adjusting better than the Drama Queen is. I don’t know how long cat memories are, but he did live in a shelter until he was four months old. Her Majesty, on the other hand, is used to coming and going as she pleases. She spent the first day glaring at me from the top drawer of my dresser. The second day she viciously attacked Babyface with no provocation—twice.
And today the sergeant of the guard burst in at 0630 to announce there was a perimeter security breach and someone had gone over the hill
Or more accurately, out the window. There was a tiny rip in the screen in one of the kitchen windows, and sometime last night the Drama Queen inserted her claws and enlarged the hole enough to get her pudgy little backside through. She was waiting on the porch when the spousal unit came back from walking the dogs this morning with a distinctly neener neener neener look on her face.
The spousal unit asked me to pick up a cat harness while I’m in town today. I can’t wait to see what happens next.
10 comments:
That is horrible I am so happy your cat is safe inside.
♥Darla
oh dear, the shooter doesn't sound too mentally stable...
If she's like our cat--you put the harness on and she does her imitation of a "dead cat". Our son tried it out of curiosity on ours and spent thirty minutes trying to get him to stand up and walk. Just wish I'd had a video camera to tape his face!!
Cats sure can be escape artists if they want to be. I have to leave my windows closed even in the summer when it is hot because my cats will push the screen out or claw a hole like yours did. Goodluck with the harness. I think cats need to trained with one when they are kittens. I got the same result as mamafrog.
Good luck with the harness. Have you plenty of bandaids? "neener, neener, neener" - too funny!!!! Having tried a Maine Coon on a harness - "dead cat" is more like "dead hippo". You know that cats can suck all the heavy molucules from the universe into their tiny paws, right? After all, that was a herd of thundering elephants at 4am, not Drama Queen.
Good luck!
Amy, some of my neighbors are stilling living in small town America circa 1970 when such behavior was perfectly normally. It is illegal to shoot cats, it's even more illegal to fire off a weapon within city limits, but what he's suspected of doing and what can be proven are two different things.
The spousal unit knows all of the players and feels this will blow over in a few weeks. I hope so; someone was sitting across the kitchen island from me this morning with a look on her face that would not have done much for my life expectancy had she been able to translate it into action.
Oooo, sounds like our small town. Here some people like to catch cats to use to train their hounds. I'd like to "train" some people. Makes me sick.
Hope this blows over soom. Please let us know about the harness experiment. :)
I also live in the land of the cat-shooters. The one that lived behind us at a house where we used to live didn't have very good eyesight and took out one of our sheep and a few ground hogs (or maybe he was aiming at ground hogs and took out our sheep and another neighbor's two cats).
Good luck and hope lock down doesn't last too long!
oh too bad,
drama queen will really have something to be up in the air about with a harness, I can just imagine how that will work. one of the kids tried to put a leash on one of the barn cats it was like her side was glued to the barn floor or maybe there was magnet in her side that attracted concrete, cuz there was no way you were going to move her. After the leash was removed then the claws showed up.
well...he tried the experiment with Reserve Cat first and it was about as successful as you would imagine. Poor Brian! He really loves our cats and knows how much they want to be outside.
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