What must the neighbors think?

Yes, yes, I'm back after family visiting. Blog post to follow on that one. But in the mean time, here's a little New Year Day story for you.

Wife took Dog out for a last pee before bed. And then came back in very upset. It seemed Dog found something interesting to smell. A dead rat. It's the second one that has been found in our back yard in the last few weeks. And might explain the sounds of cat screaming we heard earlier.

This is understandably upsetting and gross. We don't want Dog trying to play with it again and it would probably be best if it wasn't left out to attract flies or other critters. I go out and get the shovel.

A quick survey makes me realize that the front yard by the street has ample light and very soft sandy soil to dig in. So I carry the corpse up there and find a decent spot to go to work. One shallow grave later and the rat is hopefully entombed. A quick pat down of the dirt and I look up to see a middle age African American woman walking down the street.

"Happy new year" she says. I respond in kind. It was very neighborly. But part of me does wonder what she was thinking to see some tattooed guy digging a hole in the middle of the night.

Meow

Sorry about the length between posts. I have a bunch of topics, so the next few days should be a whirlwind comparatively. I hope folks are still checking in.

So, to follow up on the next great disaster post, if you guessed a neighborhood semi-feral cat would use one of our scooters as a springboard to jump a fence and in the process rip great holes in one of our 40+ dollar scooter covers, you'd be right. Our neighborhood has a large number of wandering cats. They're semi-domesticated, some more than others. And a large number of them like to hang out in our backyard and sleep under our car. And under our apartment. And walk on our car and leave footprints.

I realize that cats are a common critter in many parts of our country. But down here there are few rivals or predators. No rats big enough to fight back for example. And no winter cold snap to send them for cover. Or kill them or whatever. And little enough traffic so that's not a threat either. So they lounge around our yard. And crap in it from time to time.

This isn't the first time I've had a less than happy interaction with neighborhood cats either. Back a few years I lived in a townhouse. We were in the middle one of a row of five. And there was a space underneath that was about 2 feet deep that ran the entire length of the row. So a feral cat chose to have her liter of kittens down there. My roommate at the time decided we needed to save them. Or adopt one at least. So I stupidly climbed under the townhouse and spent a half an hour sweating underneath, trying not to bang my head and trying to corner one of them even though they were much quicker and more agile than I was. I finally gave up. Twenty minutes later they were on the back porch and I managed to throw a towel over one and scoop it up. I am well aware of how stupid this is, thank you. Not surprisingly it came out angry and defensive, all claws and hissing and teeth. And that tiny, tiny little bastard wiggled free and clamped down on my thumb hard enough to bite through the nail.

I had to physically shake it off cause it did not want to let go. Amazingly enough, it didn't draw blood due to the angle of the bite even though it was near the bed. That was some comfort but let me tell you if you've never had an animal bite through your thumb nail, it really hurts.

Don't get me wrong, I like cats. We have one of our own after all. But I also don't try so hard to keep the dog from chasing them away any more. Hey, I don't see the one who ripped up my cover coming forward to apologize or chip in to help replace it.