House Arrest

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.