RRN Online Volume 8

August 02 '96

Volume 8

Feline Follies

Lisa Bennett of Dallas, Texas, wrote to tell me a picture of her cat, that she submitted last year, was chosen to appear in the 1997 calendar in a box promoted by the Humane Society. Aware that in this imperfect world, there are people who adore cats, it sort of makes me feel guilty for throwing a hammer at the neighbor's cat on my back porch about 12:30 last Tuesday night. Actually, I believe the tempter in the Garden of Eden was a cat, not a serpent, and I am therefore completely justified in trashing cats.

We have been periodically plagued by a nightly visitor at our backdoor in Greenville. At times the noise seems to be on the wall near the backyard flood lights and at other times it sounds as though something is trying to open our storm door. I have suspected a feline might be responsible for some of the noises that I have awakened to, and I confirmed this in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. Barbara and I both were being disturbed from our sleep by something slamming itself against the storm door. While on most occasions we are able to return to sleep, without further investigation, I decided it was time, once and for all, to positively identify the nature of the noise. Earlier attempts have failed, because the porch is hidden from view by a paneless, closed wooden door that cannot be opened quietly, and is not viewable from the bedroom windows nor the bathroom window, and because I have not been successful in my attempts to quietly get outside the house and around to the backyard undetected.

After turning off the security alarm, I slipped out the front door of the house, armed only with a 16 oz. claw hammer. I went around back via the dark side of the house and peered around the back corner across a well lighted area and onto the small porch at the backdoor of the house. A large gray and white cat sat calmly grooming itself, unaware of my presence. A light misting rain dampened my footsteps as I ran toward the intruder. At about 15 feet from the cat I hurled the hammer at my target. At the time I actually hoped to strike a death blow to the pest, but it apparently had at least one of its 9 lives left. The rubber covered handle struck the brick porch and ricocheted into the aluminum base of the storm door with a loud bang. The noise woke my other neighbor’s dog. The large white dog dislikes me about as much as he dislikes the cat. I call it a dog, but for its size, it might be an albino wolf. It is big whatever its lineage. The 6 foot fence between us contains him, but offers little protection from the sounds he emanates. Someday it may clear the fence in a giant leap. A great struggle will ensue. Only one of us will survive the battle, me.

You would think a cat that had such a close brush with death would have made a bee-line home. Instead it stopped just around the corner of my house. I picked up the hammer and pursued it, first to the front yard then to the side yard where it stopped to peer back at me, then to the vacant lot next door and as I again ran towards it, it sought refuge behind the brick wall of its home territory. I returned to my front door where my startled nephew, Brett, awaited to learn the fate of the intruder. Brett, Felicia, and Sarah Sue were visiting us in Greenville. Brett was on the couch in the living room watching TV when I, with hammer in hand, walked out the front door. Both Barbara and Brett imagined the noise could have been a gunshot. Felicia and Sarah were not awaked by the commotion.

To ensure an unfavorable reception awaited the neighbor’s cat, should it return that night, I sprayed some pet repellant on the storm door, back porch and steps. Chemical retardant is a less drastic measure than the hammer throw, so maybe the Humane Society will not come knocking at my front door.

No sooner did I run off a pesky cat in Greenville, until a foe arrived in our backyard in Pontotoc. I could easily turn from a cat disliker to a cat hater. Let me say that cat owners should be required to contain their pets. House cats belong in a house, not out visiting in the neighborhood.

I was a dog owner for 17 years. The only time that my dog ever ran free out of its home territory was when she managed to break the clothes line wire or the chain that was attached to the clothes line. She may have mildly disturbed the neighbors with her barking, but she soon learned that her name, harshly spoken by her owner was a command to stop the barking immediately. We tried a kitten, but we soon decided that we could not adapt to a cat in the house. One day she went for a stroll and we never saw her again.

This straggly looking cat has a flea collar and a cat collar, but no identification. Not knowing its gender, I will refer to the cat as it. It appears to be of the lineage of shorthaired Persians. It is definitely unsuited for survival in a hostile environment, since it is incapable of discerning human commands to leave, or human body language that is of a threatening nature. Perhaps that is how it survives hostile humans, by pretending stupidity in order to evoke sympathy from the hostile force.

I discovered, by accident, that it belonged to my neighbor. My neighbor used to have a backyard full of stupid, barking dogs. The neighbor remarried a couple of years ago, moved out and rented the house for less than a year before breaking the lease with the tenants. Her teenage daughter had one child out of wedlock, later married and after a short stint in the married ranks, bailed out and wanted to move back in the house. A few more months passed and her mother has also moved back, minus a husband.

It was raining Saturday afternoon when I heard a man's voice calling in the high register of his vocal range, almost to the falsetto voice, "kit, kit, kit......." He was standing partly out of the backdoor of the neighbors house. Upon seeing Sarah and me in the carport he informed us that the windows to the Mustang were down. I ran out to roll them up, since Jason was not home, and the first thing that I saw when I opened the passenger door was the new cat sitting under the shelter of the dash inside the Mustang. I grabbed the animal by its collar and more or less flung it toward the rear of the car. It soon found its way inside the neighbor's house. As I rounded the car to get the other window, my neighbor tells the guy that did the cat calls (pun intentional) that I am Wayne and introduces him as Bing, Ben, Bill, or something close. It was sort of hard to hear with the rain pelting not just my head, but the neighbors metal roofed utility building, and the roofs of the two cars parked outside of my carport. The man I met was not the 2nd husband.

Saturday night I used a broom to dislodge the cat from the roof of my company car. I then sprayed the area surrounding the car as well as the car tires, in an effort to dissuade the cat from taking up residence on my property.

Sunday morning Barbara discovered the cat on the dash of Jason’s Baretta. Even though Jason had less than a 3 1/2 inchs of opening in the window on the driver’s side the cat had managed to squeeze itself inside and found a manufactured depression in the dashboard to be to its liking. Barbara tried gently coaxing the critter to leave, but apparently it understands no human phrases, short of the high pitched ‘kit’. She found it necessary to extract the cat by the collar as I had done.

I was back in Pontotoc for a few minutes late Tuesday afternoon. I had been to Tupelo to pick up my lower partial plate from the dentist, where I had left it on the prior Thursday to have it fitted with a third tooth. I stopped by to see if Sarah was back from visiting a divorce lawyer in Tupelo and to check my mail, before driving back to Greenville. The first thing I saw as I stepped from my parked car, was the neighbor’s cat, happily reclining in a section of our new flower bed adjacent to the carport. I pickup the spray caansister of animal repellent and sprayed in the general direction of the reclining cat, and then along the perimeters of the flower bed.

I am attempting to eradicate the cat prowling with chemical spray. To be effective I need to be

where I can spray the chemical on several consecutive days. The cat may become immune to the spray before I can run it off.

Bumblebee Saga Continued

After attempting to eradicate a nest of bumblebees in an old Bluebird house, a week or so back, I invested in some wasp and hornet spray. I had doused the bees with gasoline one Saturday afternoon and was amazed to find most of the hive still alive and well on Sunday morning. The next Wednesday afternoon, I shot some wasp and hornet spray into the opening of their hive and did not get a response. The following Saturday, I set out to remove the hive from the inside of the bird house. Cautiously, I tested the hive for occupants by striking the house with a basketball several times. Still no response. I proceeded to drop the hinged bottom of the bird house and exposed a bird nest of the previous year. With a long slender wooden strip I began to slowly dislodge the straw nest, when suddenly two bumblebees, then a third flew out of the bottom of the nest and after a quick look around returned to the hive via the main entrance.

I decided to burn them out. I reasoned that the gasoline soaked straw should burn rapidly. After about 5 matches I finally managed to ignite the south side of the exposed nest. The fire smoldered over the next 30 minutes, rarely bursting into flames. I never witnessed any of the bees leave the nest. After a considerable amount of time the smoldering fire extinguished itself. The contents of the house were either burned or fell to the ground below. The house itself remained scorched but intact. Several larva clumps were among the scattered remains. A couple of bees later returned to explore the damage, one of which I was able to spray as it crawled among the larva clumps on the ground.

I have since seen several bees fly into the bottomless house and then fly back out. I suppose I will have to check the house periodically, to make certain they do not begin another hive.

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