A Cat Tale

Does anything distinguish a home as "white trash" more than having 52 cats on the porch? I think not. And yet, here I am! In my defense, three of these cats were dumped off at the end of our driveway--the three good ones. The rest are inbred, disfunctional, obnoxious creatures that migrate between our house and our two neighbors. I only like the black and white one. He runs out to greet me when I drive up and nuzzles my leg and purrs. He's rather inconvenient when my arms are full of groceries, but socially, he gets top billing. I'd like to get rid of all but him. Marielle and Peter, however, know and love each one. They claim that the ones I most despise are the best mousers, which is probably true. But mousers or not, some of them have to go. We've asked around and nobody wants them.

To get rid of these cats, there are a few alternatives. One man in our ward gets out his shotgun when his cat population gets out of hand. Truly I admire his callous and nerve--but I'm not a great shot, and besides, I don't have it in me.

I could do the responsible thing and take them to the Humane Society, where for 25.00 each, I can drive away and never look back. But I don't have an extra 300.00 lying around, so that's out.

OK. So I'm going to tell the world a story that only a select few know. Since few people read this blog and it's mostly for my benefit, I'll cleanse my conscience and just say it. About three or four years ago, I was having a bad day. I don't know. A lot of things had piled up in my life and one of those things was, you got it--cats. Now all of those other things were entirely out of my control, but I knew I could do something about the cats. So I made a plan. These cats were extremely wild and they were lurking everywhere. I knew they had to go, but I had to catch them first. So, I think it was Kristen and Mikelle and I went out one night and spread a blanket on the lawn with about 5 cut up weinies in the center. Cats came from everywhere and while they were madly eating, we each took a corner of the blanket and wrapped them up. No. We didn't suffocate them. We took our clawing, panicked bundle and threw it in the car. (This sounds much easier that it actually was.) Once we had loaded all the cats we could catch that way--and a few we caught individually, we drove into the night--further and further. We didn't want a Homeward Bound story. This had to be final. My heart was pounding because I knew this was about as low-life as a person gets and I was not only doing it, but I was teaching my kids to do it! Finally we found an area--nice and wooded with houses scattered here and there. It was no problem getting the cats to leave. It turned out, they didn't really like the car. They took off like shots in every direction and we slowly drove home. This is the way I rationalized the whole thing: When these strays turned up, the people could call animal control and have them picked up for nothing. So no real harm done. After all, my taxes paid for animal control so, really.... Right or wrong, the three of us took a secret pact never to tell what happened to the cats. Even Bruce was kept in the dark. It was our own crime. We didn't really think anyone would notice since there were still 2 or 3 random cats around. We were eating breakfast the very next morning when Bruce, who was much more invested in the cats than we thought, came in and asked us if we knew where they were. Dead silence. Our pact had not included an explanation so we just shrugged and kept eating, trying not to look at eachother. Eventually, it all blew over.

So here is the question: Do I, or don't I? And do I act alone this time? Hmm...