I’m not a cat guy.
In a moment of weakness, I acquiesced to my wife’s getting one. It was with us for fifteen years.
And every day for those fifteen years, I was cleaning cat hair or litter out of something.
Pants. Curtains. Books. Coffee mugs.
It was infuriating.
No, I am not a cat guy.
So imagine my delight when an entire family took up residence in the bushes outside my front door.
They were just there one day. Two kittens and a mom.
My wife went immediately to work. She called the neighbor across the street to coordinate a feeding schedule. Bowls of cat food and water would be cycled on and off my front porch at prescribed intervals throughout the day.
“I’m not gonna let them starve,” she says.
How are they suddenly our responsibility? I ask. We didn’t ask for this.
“Doesn’t matter,” she says. “We’ll figure it out.”
Figure what out? I ask.
There’s danger here. Danger she’ll want to keep one of those damn things.
And that’s a huge problem. I am not going back to the cat life.
She’s waiting me out. Figures I’ll break at some point.
Ain’t happening. I stand firm.
Don’t get any funny ideas, I tell her.
The cat-feeding routine goes on for a week, which seems to suit the cats just fine. They’re always on the damn porch.
There was a close call one night. My wife opened the front door to retrieve the food bowl and was met by a cocker spaniel-sized racoon, chowing away. Thing didn’t even flinch when it saw her. It was that big.
My wife certainly flinched, nearly falling backwards into our foyer. From then on, the cat bowls were safely inside by dusk.
Then came the next problem.
The next-door neighbor’s dog goes berserk at the sight of cats.
I wouldn’t care, except my neighbor removed the device on the dog’s collar some time ago that zaps the thing when it goes beyond the perimeter of the invisible fence. Having been conditioned by a sufficient number of zaps, the dog usually just chills out in the yard, with or without the zap-collar.
Except when it sees a cat.
Then, the dog says, “F—- it!” and goes careening out of the neighbor’s yard.
Just as it did when it saw the cats on my front porch.
It’s a Wednesday morning, and I’m working from home. Wanted a little peace and quiet to concentrate on a project.
My office sits at the front of the house, just off the foyer. I can hear everything that happens on the front porch.
Including the neighbor’s dog completely losing its shit over the cats in the bushes.
It’s jumping around, barking, kicking mulch all over my yard.
I throw open the front door, livid, and go straight for the dog. As I do, I unleash a salvo of expletives so the thing understands exactly what’s about to go down.
My plan is to grab it by the collar and drag it back to the neighbor’s yard.
But I don’t get that far.
Standing just on the other side of the bushes, out of sight from the front porch, is my neighbor. He’d heard everything I’d said to his dog.
And he’s pissed. He scoops up the dog with both arms and says, “You know, if you guys didn’t feed those feral cats of yours, we wouldn’t have this problem.”
And then he turns around and goes storming off into his garage.
Great. Just what I need. A pissed-off neighbor.
I tell my wife all about it when she gets home.
He’s right, I tell her. You shouldn’t be feeding those cats.
“He needs to control his dog,” she says. “Cats or no cats, that dog doesn’t belong in our yard.”
That’s a fair point, too.
And so here I am, in the middle.
It goes on like this for a couple more weeks.
The cats continue to get fed, and a pall of awkwardness descends upon the neighborhood as people take sides.
Cat people on one side, dog people on the other.
Eventually, the neighbor across the street arranges for someone from a shelter to trap the cats. They’ll get their shots and, hopefully, adopted.
The two kittens are taken in by adopting families quickly. Good for them.
The mom, however, is deemed un-tame-able by the people at the shelter. It won’t be getting adopted.
So, now what? I ask my wife. I’m pretty sure I know the answer.
“She’ll get released,” she says.
What? Where? I ask.
“They say it’s best to return the cat to the environment it came from . . . you know, so they remember where to find food.”
Food? You mean our front porch?
Yup.
Back out goes the food bowl.
And here we go again.
The neighbors surmise that someone dropped the cats off in our neighborhood, figuring they’d get taken in.
If that’s true, I have a message for that person.
I will find you.
I will call up my Navy SEAL friends, and I will get instruction on how to clandestinely surveil your house.
And then I will watch you.
I will learn your routines – your “pattern of life,” as they call it in the intelligence world.
And then, one day, at a time of my choosing, I will strike.
You’ll be walking out to your car in the morning, coffee in hand, thinking ahead to the day’s first meeting, and then . . .
Wham!
You’ll look down and find a piece of paper tucked neatly under your windshield wiper.
You will take it, and you will read it.
And you’ll see that it’s a very sternly worded letter.
From me.
In which I kindly suggest that, rather than drop stray cats in others’ neighborhoods, you instead take them to a shelter.
And I’ll give you the phone number for that shelter.
And I’ll tell you to ask for Shelley. Because she works there, and she’s super nice.
That’s right.
You won’t ever see it coming.
That’s not a threat, my friend.
It’s a promise.
Are you ready?
Here I come . . .