Sunday, February 6, 2011

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood...

The sun in shining, the air is warming, the birds are singing. I step outside and breathe in the crisp air wanting to spin around like Julie Andrews on a hilltop when I turn, and see...

...the neighbor's graffiti-ed refrigerator sitting in their driveway and hear their 2.5 year old roof tarp flapping in the wind, while their yappy little yap-dogs yap away at nothing as usual. I sigh, realizing the peaceful sounds will be short lived when the teenage boys finally wake up and decide to lift weights in their garage to the sounds of thumpthump gangsta rap most of the day. I glance down to see their white, male tomcat cower under a dented Trans Am watching my every move. We have a hate-hate relationship. I stamp my foot in a show of force as he flinches and arches his back. Yes, I hate you too.

This cat has decided to conduct his nightly kitty war meetings on my back patio. Most nights at 0-dark-thirty, I awaken to the yowling and growling of cat war. Once, there were even bloody cat prints on my patio. I used to get up, and charge outside armed with only a broom and brave the unmistakable pungent tang of cat spray to chase off the invaders. This no longer works. There are three of them. A tripartite of cat-ass-trophe (sorry for the pun. Couldn't resist)

I was advised to use everything from vinegar to citrus rinds to cayenne pepper to deter these feline hooligans, but deduced that all I was doing was marinating my patio. I placed cheap wire fencing around the patio, but they jumped it anyway and the patio just looked like a fenced concrete prison yard. I placed faulty, blinking, staked solar yard lights to confuse them. I filled the open corners in the fence with bricks, limbs and other yard crap to make it harder for them to enter my yard. I TRIED to play nice, I TRIED to deter rather than punish.

I bought...a BB gun.

Now before you sic PETA on me and fill my comment page with hate comments, I bought the lowest powered plastic pistol that shoots plastic BB's. It will do no more than sting for a few moments but still get my point across. I made use of it the other night with a long haired cat and can say that 1) he has not been in my backyard again and 2) I have seen him in other yards since  and he is no worse for wear.

I just want to be able to sit on my patio and sip coffee without smelling cat spray.

Go ahead punk...make my day

2 comments:

Lisa said...

Loving this entire post! I have an imense dislike for people that do not control their pets. My bet is that non of the invaders are properly "altered" or current on their shots either...

As for the BB shooter, go for it. If it gets them out of your territory permanently then job well done!

And yes, i have two cats but I would never let them roam free like that....

Christi said...

Yeah, the neighbors classically have not been known to register, vaccinate or "fix" their pets.

The weird thing is, they had a pitbull a few years ago that angrily charged me when I was getting something out of my car. Thankfully my front door was ajar and a narrowly escaped being bitten. Then he peed all over my front porch! The dog ended up getting picked up by animal control (after I reported it) but not after chewing up some fence boards and entering my backyard. I tell you it was like something out of Cujo! We carried bats and crow bars to our cars until he was picked up.