Cat Burglar

11-11-09

So, I spent some of my Saturday dry heaving, which is actually not how most people would have dealt with what happened. To start from the beginning, I go into my second bedroom, which is much more of a storage room that happens to house my refrigerator than anything else. I go in to grab something from the fridge and see this huge white cat sitting on my backpack, which is on the desk. I scream, because I don’t have any cats and because I hate cats with a bloody passion. I actually convinced myself for most of my life that I was allergic to cats, though in more recent years I’ve realized that is simply not true. I’ve seen this cat before, sitting in my yard and looking up at me through its nasty beady eyes. So regardless, I scream and the cat jumps out of the window without any problem, right through the space where a pane of glass should be. (This is not my only broken window.) I continue doing this and that around my house and go back in there and the same thing happens, and again, I scream. And so as I’m duct taping the cardboard to the window pane, I’m thinking, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice…” and just how entertaining George W. was as a president.

So, my window all repaired, I go into my room and watch an episode of Dexter, which was just loaned to me by another PCV. When the episode was over I decided to go back and continue cleaning my house, but when I go into the main room, which connects both bedrooms, the bathroom and kitchen, I hear this terrible whining or crying sound. It isn’t like a child crying, but certainly some sort of animal. I have no clue what it could be so I arm myself with my Nalgene bottle in one hand and my cell phone in the other, and walk into the second bedroom/storage room/fridge room. The window is still securely duct-taped but the noise is unmistakably coming from inside the room. Suddenly I see something out of the corner of my eye—right behind my refrigerator. I jump (and, to be honest, probably scream again) and see these two disgusting little white creatures looking up at me. They look like rodents, but they’re cats. They’re small. They’re eyes are just barely open and one of them looks like it has severe pink eye. It is at this point when my stomach lurches and I’m nearly sick. I unplug the fridge, thinking of how dead cats may actually be worse than live ones in my house. I call my closest PC friend, who laughs and tells me she doesn’t know what to tell me (she is 7 hours away). I call my old 16 year old host brother who tells me that they just got a dog and I can probably deal with this on my own. So I go next door and explain my predicament to my neighbors. I don’t know these neighbors well. They’re very nice in each interaction I have with them but we usually only exchange the pleasantries. The other time I asked their help was for a leaky faucet, which they told me wasn’t a big enough problem to worry about. I think they think I’m an idiot.

Anyway, I explain my hatred for cats, that I don’t want to touch them—yes, I say, even though they’re kittens—and that they’re behind my fridge. The women exchange a look and one of them gets up, grabs a fruit crate and finds newspaper to line it. As I move my fridge, we see that there are three kittens, not two. She picks each up, saying that it looks like they were born here and that they’ve probably been here for 22 days. My stomach lurches again, but I hide it well. She carries the crate into the back yard, saying the mother will be back for them. I thank her repeatedly as she gives me a smile and leaves. I start to worry that they’ll freeze outside. It is our summer, but Saturday was cold and rainy, and there was probably a reason they were huddled up next to the coils of my fridge so I take an old t-shirt out and put it in the box. Fifteen minutes later, my neighbor is back, saying that there are other neighbors who want the cats as pets. One of the cats has decided to explore a little and has wedged itself between a wall and a chain link fence. She can’t get it out. As she takes the other two, I see that the chain link looks like it may be gagging and/or trapping the cat, so I pull it away slightly (with plenty of room between my hand and the cat). It hisses. I jump and scream, and swear (in English). My neighbor is behind me and smiles politely. She takes the box and the 2 disgusting little conjunctivitis-eyed cat rats. A few minutes later she comes back for the third.

I call my closest PC friend again. She recently got internet and I have her look up some info on Wikipedia about cats. The idea that those nasty little gremlins were in my house for three weeks without my knowledge is more than I can handle. Plus, I have some questions. Why didn’t I hear them before? Where is the cat shit and piss? The mother definitely sheds (my backpack was proof) but that was the first day I saw cat hair. How old are cats when they begin to see? Here is what I’ve learned: cats cannot urinate nor defecate without their mother’s help (?) for the first 2 weeks of life. They usually begin to see after about 7 to 10 days. There was a wild storm on Friday night so it is possible they were born elsewhere and brought to my humble abode after birth. (My mother tells me this is possible, and I whole-heartedly would like to believe this hypothesis.) Or, if not, I may have been out of town when they were born (why do I keep wanting to say hatched like they came from eggs??) since I was out of town for a couple of nights the weekend before for Halloween.

Saturday night I had some trouble falling asleep, just thinking of those disgusting creatures sharing my roof for any amount of time. A week or two before I began thinking about the possibility of actually getting a cat for myself. It sounds absurd, I know, but I thought maybe I could have an outdoor cat that could come in to kill any mice or bugs I may have. The previous volunteer once found two mice cuddling in her bed when she was about to climb in in the middle of the winter. I hope to avoid this at all costs. But it seems that a cat probably isn’t the answer I’m looking for. Now I just keep thinking of how unfortunate it is that a dog didn’t climb in my window and leave cute little puppies behind my fridge. I would have kept one and completely avoided all of Saturday’s queasiness.