Loving Those Fat Cats!

This is another one of those posts without relevant pictures. It's too dark under my house for starters, and for a real show-stopper, it's near 0 degrees outside in Indiana and I'm not crawling around with a camera in there to make it work.

But the guy who came to fix our Direct TV wires today didn't have that luxury. He was being paid to wear clothes to protect you in Antarctica and dig around in that tight, dark space to run new cabling. And he emerged with what he said was bad news: We have a fat cat living under the floorboards.

Well, keep talkin', dude.

You see, a few weeks ago, I heard a horrendous noise in my walls and blamed it on mice. We've subsequently heard it several more times, and my dog, Dribbler, has spent a lot of time sniffing vents and pointing at the walls. I've lived in terror one of those rodents would suddenly shoot across the carpet, and my dog wouldn't be there to protect me.



Do I look like I'm in the mood to catch mice today? That's why we're harboring a cat, you ninny.



Now I have to form a new theory: either I heard this cat all along, or there were mice and he moved in for the easy feasting. I like both scenarios much better.

So the actual bad news is that Mr. Kitty has to go. We found how he's been entering and exiting the premises, and if he can do it, so can a opossum. Or a squirrel. Or (shudder) a raccoon. I double-checked with some cat-owning friends, who confirmed these critters are too big for a cat to kill, so it's not like Mr. Tom can protect his cozy territory under my feet. The last time raccoons invaded our space, we had a $6,000 homeowners claim for the damage.

Sigh. Maybe I can convince State Farm it's worth it to keep the possibility of mice at bay. Because my dog is a poor bet in an emergency.