Something tore a gaping hole through the screen on one of our crawl space vent holes. I’d have thought it was a possum, except that I haven’t seen a possum (not even of the common road kill variety) in our county in at least two years. My money was on raccoons. We’d had problems with them in the distant past, because we once had a neighbor who thought they were cute and fattened them up on cat food. We hadn’t seen raccoons for awhile either, but they’re great hiders and rarely pause in city streets to fight moving truck tires as the now-hopefully-extinct possums did.
Whatever had built this entrance to our crawl space was really beginning to agitate me. Off and on for several weeks, we heard horrible sounds emanating from underneath our laundry room – hisses, howls, bumps, and a sound that I imagined must be the sharpening of eyeteeth on drain pipes.
Time to act! We acquired a good solid wire box trap of the sort recommended by the Humane Society and various other PWCs (people who care). We added a dish of dry cat food, set the hook, and placed it down there where the varmint would find it.
It only took a couple of days. But it wasn’t a raccoon or a possum or my third guess (judging from the noise it made down there), a velociraptor.
My prey wasn’t happy inside my trap, despite the trap’s innate humaneness. I wasn’t happy with him either. Believe it or not, I am quite tolerant of and even friendly to well-behaved and well-controlled pets despite a vast array of dog bites collected while delivering newspapers in the days before leash laws. My catch hissed and snarled unceasingly in that trap. I’d rather have impaled it on a spear and displayed it in my front yard as a warning to all other feral creatures and their past or soon-to-be past owners. However, I have learned through a half-century of experience that even the most obnoxious members of sometimes-domestic species have a politically-correct army of human(e)s the size and ferocity of which I am ill-suited to handle on my own. Besides, my benevolent wife would not be pleased. So I did the right thing.
We gave up a portion of our Easter Sunday. We contacted every neighbor we could find to see if they were missing a cat or even recognized the one we “stumbled upon,” for the beast was not licensed or even collared. I knocked doors. K talked to various humans and machines on the phone. No takers. No leads. When we got home from church at 2:30 PM, there were no messages on our own phone-answering machine and no Post-It notes on our door from distraught mothers or fathers looking to reclaim “Fluffy” or “Tiger”.
My wife and I had agreed (thankfully!) that the creature could not spend the night. Nor could the creature be released within five miles of the house. If nobody would claim him, we did not want him awakening us at 2 AM again. I had a nice woodlot picked out in my mind, ten miles away from our house on the opposite side of a wide, deep, fast-flowing river, where there were plenty of rodents to feed on and plenty of coyotes in need of a meal. If the cat wanted to be wild, maybe it could be wild there.
Did you know the Humane Society’s Pet Lost & Found Department is open on Easter? I didn’t. I was going through the motions of dialing their number “just to be sure,” and a real person answered on the second ring. Try to get that level of customer service from your bank! I learned that they would accept my beast if I got him there by 5:00 PM. At four, I decided time was up. I loaded the cage in my trunk, now lined with an old tarp in case “Toby” got scared sh**less during the ride. Off to the shelter we went.
The volunteers there were very nice. I think they were all high-school girls, either working on their Senior Service hours or campaigning for a Teens Who Make a Difference Award of some kind. They walked me through the paperwork and took the varmint trap to the back room, where somebody who was hopefully dressed in thick leather from head to toe apparently extricated the animal. When one of the volunteers came out to give me the trap, I asked her what would happen to the cat. She replied that hopefully somebody would return to claim him, and if not, maybe somebody would adopt him. My interpretation: “The thing will be stone-cold dead in a week, but it won’t feel a thing.” Okay. That’s mean. I apologize. I didn’t particularly want the cat to die. I just didn’t want to hear it under my house again.
I got home at about five, and we went to a friend’s house for Easter dinner. We didn’t get home until late. However, the phone-answering machine was there, and it did its job, much to my chagrin. The little red light blinked on and off. When I pushed the little button, the machine spewed forth its message, recorded at 7:55 PM. “K, I hope I am not too late. This is Connie Ferguson over on Tremont Street. I think you found my cat….”
K talked to her this morning. “My cat would never have gone under your house on his own. Something must have scared him to make him go under there. He wasn’t licensed yet, but I intended to do it this week – really! He had a collar; it must have gotten snagged on something and broken off.” It really did sound to K like Connie was going over to the Humane Society’s animal jail to bail the fur ball out. I hope he never comes back here. Now that I know he’s Connie’s “kid,” there’s no way to dispatch him without seeing that humane army storm across my front lawn in battle array.
I’m looking for suggestions just in case!
Whatever had built this entrance to our crawl space was really beginning to agitate me. Off and on for several weeks, we heard horrible sounds emanating from underneath our laundry room – hisses, howls, bumps, and a sound that I imagined must be the sharpening of eyeteeth on drain pipes.
Time to act! We acquired a good solid wire box trap of the sort recommended by the Humane Society and various other PWCs (people who care). We added a dish of dry cat food, set the hook, and placed it down there where the varmint would find it.
It only took a couple of days. But it wasn’t a raccoon or a possum or my third guess (judging from the noise it made down there), a velociraptor.
My prey wasn’t happy inside my trap, despite the trap’s innate humaneness. I wasn’t happy with him either. Believe it or not, I am quite tolerant of and even friendly to well-behaved and well-controlled pets despite a vast array of dog bites collected while delivering newspapers in the days before leash laws. My catch hissed and snarled unceasingly in that trap. I’d rather have impaled it on a spear and displayed it in my front yard as a warning to all other feral creatures and their past or soon-to-be past owners. However, I have learned through a half-century of experience that even the most obnoxious members of sometimes-domestic species have a politically-correct army of human(e)s the size and ferocity of which I am ill-suited to handle on my own. Besides, my benevolent wife would not be pleased. So I did the right thing.
We gave up a portion of our Easter Sunday. We contacted every neighbor we could find to see if they were missing a cat or even recognized the one we “stumbled upon,” for the beast was not licensed or even collared. I knocked doors. K talked to various humans and machines on the phone. No takers. No leads. When we got home from church at 2:30 PM, there were no messages on our own phone-answering machine and no Post-It notes on our door from distraught mothers or fathers looking to reclaim “Fluffy” or “Tiger”.
My wife and I had agreed (thankfully!) that the creature could not spend the night. Nor could the creature be released within five miles of the house. If nobody would claim him, we did not want him awakening us at 2 AM again. I had a nice woodlot picked out in my mind, ten miles away from our house on the opposite side of a wide, deep, fast-flowing river, where there were plenty of rodents to feed on and plenty of coyotes in need of a meal. If the cat wanted to be wild, maybe it could be wild there.
Did you know the Humane Society’s Pet Lost & Found Department is open on Easter? I didn’t. I was going through the motions of dialing their number “just to be sure,” and a real person answered on the second ring. Try to get that level of customer service from your bank! I learned that they would accept my beast if I got him there by 5:00 PM. At four, I decided time was up. I loaded the cage in my trunk, now lined with an old tarp in case “Toby” got scared sh**less during the ride. Off to the shelter we went.
The volunteers there were very nice. I think they were all high-school girls, either working on their Senior Service hours or campaigning for a Teens Who Make a Difference Award of some kind. They walked me through the paperwork and took the varmint trap to the back room, where somebody who was hopefully dressed in thick leather from head to toe apparently extricated the animal. When one of the volunteers came out to give me the trap, I asked her what would happen to the cat. She replied that hopefully somebody would return to claim him, and if not, maybe somebody would adopt him. My interpretation: “The thing will be stone-cold dead in a week, but it won’t feel a thing.” Okay. That’s mean. I apologize. I didn’t particularly want the cat to die. I just didn’t want to hear it under my house again.
I got home at about five, and we went to a friend’s house for Easter dinner. We didn’t get home until late. However, the phone-answering machine was there, and it did its job, much to my chagrin. The little red light blinked on and off. When I pushed the little button, the machine spewed forth its message, recorded at 7:55 PM. “K, I hope I am not too late. This is Connie Ferguson over on Tremont Street. I think you found my cat….”
K talked to her this morning. “My cat would never have gone under your house on his own. Something must have scared him to make him go under there. He wasn’t licensed yet, but I intended to do it this week – really! He had a collar; it must have gotten snagged on something and broken off.” It really did sound to K like Connie was going over to the Humane Society’s animal jail to bail the fur ball out. I hope he never comes back here. Now that I know he’s Connie’s “kid,” there’s no way to dispatch him without seeing that humane army storm across my front lawn in battle array.
I’m looking for suggestions just in case!
7 comments:
OMG, what a way to spend your Easter Sunday. I don't think your neighbor was telling you the truth. She let the cat out for the day while she was out. Mau would have taken the cat.
Actually, he was out for the night at least. I found him in the trap at daybreak, and I think he'd been there awhile.
The rest of the story... Connie did go and get the cat out of hock. It ran her some money: $10 for "room and board," $15 for "intake," and whatever a license costs. I am hoping that after his ordeal, this cat will steer clear of our property. He only has eight more lives to waste!
Mau would have turned the cat over to Joe in a pillow case!
When we had a cat,a visiting cat would fight with "Herb" at the sliding glass door. That was fine until it ripped our screen. Since this caused work for me,I was not happy. Anyway,some tuna mixed with hot sauce did the trick. I never saw the cat again. I'm sure it was fine......crapping it's guts out somewhere. I wonder if it stuck around to bury it,or if it got tired of burying it after a while and gave up? I may never know.
Somehow, I knew lud would have a good suggestion! That'll work with raccoons and other pesky mammals too! I'll try it! Well worth the tuna investment and easier than dealing with a caged savage, "cute" or not!
The hot sauce idea was way down my list,but my wife thought my other ideas would get "us" in trouble. It did provide a lot of laughs as we pictured the cat in a few tough situations.
I just keep thinking poor kitty even though I know that it has all been a huge annoyance. I look at the picture and think how can that cat behave in such a way, it is just too cute :)
We had a cat that used to come into our back yard and torment our cats. We called him "the cow" because he was white with black spots and you probably would have injured you back picking him up. I felt no symphathy for him, but he wasn't very cute either :)
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