I Despise/Hate/Abhor Cats

Yeah, despise, hate, and abhor are strong words. But they are the result of experience, not just the borrowed prejudices of my Lab Jezebel (she also hates squirrels).

I haven’t always hated cats. Years ago, I was ambivalent about cats. But their demeanor was always a bit suspicious—the way they carried their heads aloft, arrogantly sneering at people and dogs. It seems to me that cats never got over being worshiped in Egypt. But still, I figured cats had a place in life, just not in my life.

Then I had more exposure to cats. We visited a friend’s house. Their cat pranced his way across the room and onto the table (Okay, it may be a Dutch cleanliness thing, but animals DO NOT belong on surfaces from which you eat!) Anyway, this cat made his way to Ariel (she was three) and sat down right in front of her. Then without any provocation, he reached out and slashed Ariel across the face with his claws. It took every ounce of my self-control not to grab the cat by the throat and twist. The cat owner apologized vaguely.

If cats weren’t enough, cat owners often are. Cat owners have told me that cats are great pets because you never have to clean up after them. Yeah, right. It’s because your neighbors have to clean up after them. I had a neighbor with seven cats. She didn’t litter box them. Nope, that would be too much work for her. Instead they used my flower beds as a litter box. I got to clean up after them. (I was pregnant twice while we lived there and the threat of toxoplasmosis made me mutter a lot of imprecations on my lazy neighbor and her “babies.”)

Or what about the neighbor whose cat waited outside people’s screen doors to run inside as soon as the screen opened. While we lived there, I heard a lot of other neighbors screaming at said cat owner. Eventually, the cat disappeared. Or maybe we moved. I hope it was the former.

My most recent cat experience has nailed the lid on the coffin of my cat attitude. We discovered on Saturday that a cat got into the church and had probably been there for the week we were on vacation. Do you know what damage a cat can do in a week? Every room was covered with cat urine and feces. Cal and several other men spent hours and hours cleaning, scrubbing, and steam cleaning. Did it make a difference? Not much. When I walked into the building yesterday, my eyes started watering from the cat-derived ammonia. The building would probably have been better off with a fire.

Then yesterday Cal got very sick. A doctor friend said it probably came on too quickly to be toxoplasmosis. It’s probably just whatever’s going around. I prefer to blame the cat.

Did I mention that the cat spent all day yesterday stalking the church building, trying to get in again. Cats are a plague. But they’re nothing that a .22 couldn’t handle. Heh, heh.

Actually, I’ve never fired a gun. But a girl can dream...

P.S. Hey, guys, thanks for breaking the 10,000 hits mark!

I Am Not A Cat

Not long after we first met, Calvin told me that I reminded him of a cat. I hadn’t had much experience with cats, but they seemed elegant, dignified and rid the world of rodents. And maybe he meant big cats. Like a black panther or an ocelot. They are lithesome, sleek, and beautiful, stalking through the jungles or the plains. Yeah, I could be one of those.

However, my life progressed, and I had contact with cats. Why do I always have neighbors who believe it’s their calling in life to adopt every stray they can find? These packs of cats watch the world through their tawny eyes with a kind of sneering sophistication. They treat their owners (among whom I gratefully do not count myself) as though the owners’ existence is simply to provide tuna and a warm place to sleep. Affection is withheld until the owner “does his job” in providing salmon, or some other acceptable treat. If the cat is fed Purina cat chow, trust her to hack up fur balls on my driveway.

Contrast this with a dog that brings you his bone, eagerly looking for a pat on the head. Granted, the bone is soaked with slobber, and he probably dropped the bone on your silk skirt. But still, this is an animal who wants to be a part of your life and do his bit to protect you from danger, even if the perils are the blind man down the street and the Pomeranian Devil.

Cats, on the other hand, see the neighborhood as their personal litter box, especially cared-for flowers beds that are nicely mulched. Though I suppose I should fault their owners more than the cats themselves. But cats seem to believe that the entire world belongs to them.

I’ve tried to “tell” the cats that my property is mine, not theirs. First, I sprinkled cayenne pepper all over the mulch. It worked, until the first thunderstorm came. The rain and expense of cayenne forced me to find an alternative solution.

My oldest son, Dead-Eye Luke, can split a cockroach in half with an air-soft pellet at 50 feet. I recruited him to de-cat our front lawn. I gave him permission to leave his schoolwork and nail any cat he saw. (Before you call PETA, please note that the air-soft pellets don’t actually cause irreparable damage to the cats—I actually let my kids shoot each other with air soft guns, provided they wear eye protection.) At any rate, the neighborhood cats now prowl the neighborhood, but avoid our yard completely. They will make a right-angled turn when they reach our property and walk just outside the boundaries—they don’t set a paw on our property. (Luke isn’t allowed to shoot any beast not on our property.)

Now when the neighborhood cats walk by, I think, “I double dare you to try and make a mess of my mulch,” and I smile my Cheshire-like grin—but I am so “not a cat.”