In Memory of Moby-Dick

Pinguino "Angry Cat"
Originally uploaded by chatte

We've had a few interesting new homeowner experiences over the last few weeks so I'll progress chronologically...

About four months ago Matt was taking the trash and recycling out to the curb when he was surprised by a big fluffy gray cat jumping out one of our trees. The cat started hissing at him like he had trespassed on this cat's territory so Matt took a few steps towards the cat to try to scare it away. The cat trotted four or five feet in the other direction then turned around and reared up on his hind legs, claws and teeth bared hissing like some demon possessed thing. Needless to say we were pretty creeped out. Who in the world would keep a cat like that in or around their home. Whoever these neighbors were, we had decided that they must be seriously disturbed.

Fast forward a few months, Matt and I were sitting in the living room reading and surfing the internet when we heard scratching coming from our air intake vent. Great, we have mice. What do we do now? How much does it cost to buy mouse traps and what on earth have they been doing down there? Pooping? Peeing? Making mice babies? The possibilities were not only endless, they were horrifying. So like any concerned homeowner, we forgot all about for a few weeks until we heard it again. Then we forgot about it for another week. On the evening we were expected to have temperatures drop into the low teens, we went outside to check our pipes and decided to head under the house to look for leaks. As we inspected the pipes we saw claw and chew marks on the foam insulation wrapping our ductwork. Stupid mice, fornicating and defecating in our crawl space! Then we saw the puddle of liquid...mice don't make large puddles of liquid. Large animals make large puddles of liquid. Matt being the braver of the two of us, grabbed his flashlight and headed toward the front of the house to search for the beast in question. All of a sudden, I see Matt go completely still as a large gray beast slinks away from the furnace. Is it a raccoon? A possum? Can a possum hurt us? Do they carry rabies? The gray thing takes off towards the front of the house and disappears under some insulation that it had torn down and turned into a "nest" of sorts.

"It's a CAT!" Matt yells. "Hand me that pole!"
"Excuse Me?"
"Hand me that pole. I'm going to try to whack it if it comes near me. You grab that two by four and if it comes near you, you beat it."
"Can't I just let it go out the door?"
"No, because it will come back! You have to hit it!"
"Um...Okay..." Picture me practicing my best fake cat beating motion so that I might convince my husband that I gave it my best shot. "Gosh...honey, I tried but he got by me..."

Well, after 15 more minutes of literally poking around, we gave up on finding the cat and went inside to enjoy what was remaining of CSI: Miami and David Caruso's glorious over acting.

Over the next couple of days, we called around to various animal control and humane society locations only to find that dog removal would be an option...if we had a dog problem. So Matt drove to the farm store and purchased a live animal trap for 50 bucks. (While he asked the lady next to him who was purchasing things for her cats if she wanted another one. For Free! No deal. Then he also asked the lady in front of him who was buying mouse traps if she wanted our cat to catch her mice. It turns out the mice were hiding in her van so our cat offer was politely declined.)

We diligently checked the trap over the next few days only to find it empty. Is it possible that we have some sort of government trained super cat who is not only smarter than we are but has lost his taste for tuna? Does he eat other cats? Will he somehow find his way into our house and claw us in our sleep just to prove how superior he is to us? Dear Lord, what have we gotten ourselves into?!

I was at work on Friday when I got The Call.

"We got him."
"What?" Sometimes I'm not too quick to catch on...
"The cat, we got him. Boy is he mean! He bent the cage trying to get out and bled all over the place. And you want to know what? It's that same freaky cat that tried to attack me when I was taking the trash out!"
"He's your white wale! And you're Captain Ahab! Well, except you still have your leg and he hasn't pulled you to a watery grave...yet."
"Um, sure. I'm going to go get rid of him before you get home today."
"You can't kill him!"
"I told you, I'm not going to kill him."
"I don't want you to have blood on your hands!"
"One way or another, we're going to have blood on our hands, someone is going to have to kill this cat. It's not a people cat."

For the record, my husband is not a monster, he's a very gentle man. But I had somehow convinced myself that he was going to take this cat out into the woods, break his neck with his bare hands and bury it under a tree. What can I say, I have an overactive imagination...

So Matt took the cat and dropped him off at the "appropriate" location. As he walked away from the cat he turned to look back and the cat stared at him with a look that said, "You are not seriously going to leave me here are you? I will haunt you from the grave. You will regret this day! Do you hear me? You will regret it!!" Okay, the last part was exaggerated but I'm pretty sure it accurately conveys the cat's mindset at the time.

Now, I know that I told you I had two stories but I'm emotionally spent from retelling the story of Moby (a.k.a. Stupid Mangy Cat) so I'll come back to it another time - possibly tonight, more likely tomorrow, but definitely by next week. In the mean time, I'm going to take pictures of our house - mess and all so you guys can see what the place looks like.