COLUMN: Catnapper

So let's get the sad news out of the way first.

Last month, I had to say goodbye to Isobel, my feline houseguest and roommate of the past 18 years. She was the nicest, most loving, doofiest cat I've ever been around, and her loss has left a cat-sized hole in my already addled heart. I lost her twin sister about a year ago, so my house is the quietest it's been since, well, ever.

This leaves me with just one roomie, the feral neighborhood cat who just strolled through my back door a few years ago and looked at me like, "oh hi, I live here now. Food, please." Bereft of ideas for a name, I went to a website that uses cutting edge AI technology to generate random cat names, and this is how I came to have a cat named Meatbag. She never got along well with the twins, and honestly seems pretty happy to have the run of the house.

From an owner's perspective, having just one cat is MUCH easier as well. The litterboxes have ceased to be daily biohazards and I'm no longer buying more cat food than people food at the store. Still, the house has been mighty empty and sad this past month.

Which is why I've been a little over-excited this week to spot a couple tiny new neighborhood strays cavorting around my alley and backyard. My initial thought was, of course, "KITTIES! LET ME GRAB YOU AND SQUISH YOU AND LOVE YOU AND YOU WILL BE MINE FOREVER AND EVER." But I'm also a realist. The newer, mellower Shane might be better off sticking to a maximum capacity of one pet. And I have a feeling the Meatbag might also prefer the solo lifestyle. If I did take these new alley-dwellers in, I'd be in store for a lecture or two from some of the more irritatingly responsible people in my life (hi, Mom.) 

Plus, for all I know, these cats might very well already have happy homes, and I'm in no hurry to add "catnapper" to my resume in any other context than sleeping. I'm no thief. Before I took in the Meatbag, I put a collar on her with a note that said, "Is this your cat? Because she strolls into my house every day and I'm taking her in if nobody claims her." And when I did take her in a week later, I had her scanned for a microchip and I put posters and flyers around my neighborhood to make sure I wasn't stealing someone else's pet.

I should probably be responsible and NOT abduct any more alley strays. But these cats look awfully skinny and needy (AND ADORABLE), so maybe they're hoping for an open door and kind heart, who's to say? I'm not going to go out of my way to lure strange cats inside the house, buuuuut, I mean, if I were to say, leave a little bit of food on the steps in the name of charity, and if they were to eat said food and then perhaps decide to saunter inside to say hello, who am I to stand in the way of cat/human relations?  

So I left some cat treats on the back steps a couple nights ago to see what would happen. And wouldn't you know it, when I walked out to work yesterday morning, all the cat treats were gone. Perhaps I've made new friends, I thought to myself with a mild skip in my step.

Then I got home that night and rewound the security cameras to see if my feline friends enjoyed their dinner. They did not.

Instead, I watched in fast forward as for hours, the army of squirrels that reside in my neighbor's walnut tree conducted a well-choreographed stealth night raid of my back steps. Long story short, there's likely now a hidey hole somewhere in that walnut tree chock full of cat treats.

Once upon a time, I used to like squirrels. I thought they were cute and fluffy. Then I moved into a house with a walnut tree overhanging my back yard, and quickly learned that squirrels aren't cute and fluffy at all. They're mean and fluffy. Every year, a pack of them harvest that tree until every single nut is decimated. With a ballet of skillful precision, they climb onto my house, roll the walnuts off the roof and onto the sidewalk below, and use my back steps as their own personal nutcracker. I come home nightly to a blanket of walnut debris covering my walk. And no matter how hard I try, I always manage to track that detritus into the house where it tries its best to stain my carpet and I find myself on my hands and knees with a bottle of Resolve.

I wouldn't even mind any of that if the squirrels were nice, but they're not. They're mean little buggers who scowl at me when I interrupt their harvest. They climb to eye level, stare at me with their beady little eyes, and angrily go, "Thpf! Thpf!" They purposely try to drop walnuts on my noggin. Hand to God, one morning a squirrel climbed the tree for the express purpose of peeing on my head. While it WAS one of the Top 5 most interesting reasons I've had for calling in late to work, it wasn't exactly my favorite morning.

So instead of luring any cats to their doom -- I mean, their future loving home -- I instead contributed to the ongoing epidemic of squirrel obesity plaguing our fragile world. Live and learn, I guess. As for the cats, I'm guessing they ARE feral, because they aren't exactly keen on humans and run away at the slightest glance. For the time being, I think I'd better stick to one indoor pet and a couple dozen mean and fluffy outdoor ones.