Cat Burglar

God, our cat, Gizmo, is a useless wuss.  He’s a big hulking thing.  And absolutely bloody useless.  The only ones to whom he shows the slightest defiance is us, his loving carers.  Quite happy to draw blood from our gently stoking hands.  Perfectly content to dig his claws, like barbs, into our soft skin whilst biting us like a beast possessed.  Show him another animal and you won’t see him for dust.  He hid for two days under a bed when we brought a kitten home as a playmate for him.  She was half his size.  Cute fluffy kitten returned; pathetic Tom retained.  Absolutely useless.

So “defending his territory” means nothing to him.  In fact, even separately, the words mean nothing to him.  Instead of standing his ground he is much happier retired in one of the rooms upstairs.  Out of harm’s way.  While all the neighbourhood cats come in and play.  We found a visitor asleep on the sofa one night. 

It’s not as though we haven’t taken precautions.  We have a ‘clever’ cat flap that only opens when a suitably magnet-collared moggy comes by.  Just two flaws.  One, it seems every damn feline in the district has a compatible collar.  And two, even if they didn’t, Gizmo isn’t bright enough to work out that he needs to push the flap with his head in order to activate the device - he just sits outside mewing hopelessly.  It means we keep it permanently open with sticking tape.

As usual this morning, some stranger’s tongue had licked the cat bowl clean.  No, that isn’t a clever euphemism, although perhaps it should be.  Worse than the theft, the culprit (or an accomplice) had gone exploring beforehand.  It wasn’t enough, though, to simply ferret.  Oh no.  Had to make sure it was fully coated in wet mud first.  Paw-prints everywhere.  And for reasons one can only guess, just by the bread bin, the dirty thing decided to have a good shake.  That or the little bastards had a bloody mud fight just for the hell of it.  It looked as though the local farmer had driven his muck-spreader through our kitchen.

I’m not entirely sure on a course of action.  Locking the flap means getting up for Stupid Cat throughout the night.  Poisoning the food is a bit indiscriminate and automatic weapons are illegal.  I may just have to lie in wait and try to scare the vermin off.

And how do I know it wasn’t Gizmo?  Because, as usual, he’d lain across three quarters of the bed all night, swiping our toes if we made any move to dislodge him.  Damn stupid useless cat.

Comments

[Mrs RW]

You may have to give up on the kitty door and resort to a litter pan. Our daughter has 2 cats (which means that as long as she lives here, so do they) that are every bit as ungrateful as yours. Storm, the spawn of Satan, loves to knock over half-filled glasses of liquid which tends to warp the finish on fine furniture. So I have to police the tables prior to going to bed.

The other feline, Karma, spends her days covering every inch of upholstery with fine, gray hair which defies vacuuming, sticky rollers, or special cat hair-remover gadgets.

Every once in a while one of the cats escapes through an open door. Unfortunately they always come back, howling piteously until someone lets them in.

Who invented cats anyway and what are they REALLY good for?

[Carlton]

Oh Mrs RW, I've tried litter trays - horrible smelly things - and the cat didn't like it either. Still, bizarrely, I still love cats - except the interlopers of course!