Millions and Millions of Cats

I remember a book from when I was a kid. I think the name of it was Millions and Millions of Cats. I don't remember much about the book except that I think it had a red, white, and black cover. (After a quick Amazon search, it turns out it's yellow, not whitem and it was only 'Millions'. So I embellished a bit.)The story was about, well, a ton of cats. I bring this up because this is what we might title the 2008 summer at the Scott house.

I had noticed, as had my wife, that we had a couple of cats in our yard this spring. No biggie; they didn't really bother us or any of our stuff. A couple of times I scared them out from under our back porch. They had also been in our garage, entering through one of the broken windows and through the base of the garage which had rotted away (another post for another day). I didn't really mind them all that much. I wasn't really sure if they were strays or if they belonged to one of my neighbors. At any rate, I let them stay because they weren't really bothering me.

Here's the thing though. I hate cats. I've always said that. I'm not sure why or where that opinion began. I think I'll blame it on my aunt Melissa. She hated cats passionately. Well, I really liked my aunt Melissa and as kid wanted to be like her in many ways if I could. So as far as I know, this was my first reason for hating cats. Thanks Melissa! Secondly, I'm very allergic to cats. Anyone with a cat allergy knows what I'm talking about. It's debilitating. With these things in mind, you would have thought that I'd have done anything I could to get rid of these cats. But I didn't. Oops.

This past June I opened the doors to my garage and found the cats there to greet me...with 6 kittens and one other adult cat. Yep, 9 cats sitting in my garage. Check that, living in my garage. Awe, ain't that cute. I actually thought it was cute! I mean seriously, even though I "hated" cats, I still found it difficult to ignore the cuteness of the lil' kitties. Josh was thrilled! Mom-mom and Pop-pop had taken in a stray in Maryland and that stray had kittens that loved him. So Josh thought that could happen here too. I'm a sucker for pretty much anything my son wants, and Joy had always kind of wanted a cat. So I figured, hey they're in the garage, what can it hurt? Stop laughing. We went out that weekend and got one of those big fluffy pillows, an auto-feeder and auto-water bowl, some food, a litter box, and some kitty litter. I figured they'd warm up to us when we were feeding them. Nope.

It was a bit frustrating. Apparently these cats had never heard the phrase, "Don't bite the hand that feeds you." They never had the opportunity to bite my hand. They made it quite clear that if I put my hand anywhere near them, I'd regret it much like the poor little torn apart birds that were strewn around my garage floor. I quickly learned the difference between "stray" cats and "ferrel" cats. One may warm up to you, the other certainly won't. Google it. All nine of these cats, including the kittens, wanted nothing to do with any of us. Even though we were feeding them. Ungrateful little balls of stink. And they did stink.

Do you know what kind or work it takes to care for 9 cats? Well, they would all fill the litter box in one day. It stunk and I didn't empty it every day. When I didn't, they then pooped on the plush pillow we bought for them. I know when I'm appreciated. We stopped feeding them. I thought maybe they'd eat each other and we'd be back where we began. Well, sometime after we stopped feeding them they left. I'm not sure that it mattered if we were feeding them, I think they would have moved on anyways. Oh, well, I thought. It was just as well, I could hardly breath in the garage now. It took about 5 breaths for my throat to close up from an allergic reaction.

About a month or so went by until one day, I opened my garage doors to find 6 more kittens. This wasn't the same bunch. New kittens- 6 of them. They too, were entering under the rotted portion of the garage. They were living between the wall and my wood pile. "This is progress," I thought. I thought maybe they'd be friendly since there didn't seem to be any "adult" cat to teach them bad manners. I took two steps towards them and found out that they were under strict orders to rip my hand apart if it came anywhere near them. I had learned my lesson the first time. No food for them! And you know what? This seemed like the perfect time to fix the garage. It was leaning to the right and the sill plates were already rotted when we bought the house. During the process of fixing the garage, I threw the wood from the wood pile into the yard so I could get to the sill plates I needed to fix. I was feeling bad as they looked at me like "What are you doing to our home?" And then, as I reached down one last time to try and pet one of them, it hissed and made that face like the posessed cat in Pet Semitary. That was that.

This past Friday my wife woke me up saying "Jeff, the kittens are back and they're letting us pet them!" I didn't believe it. "Come look!" I drug myself out of bed to see more of the cats that I now had good reason to hate. Sure enough, I got downstairs and there was Josh playing with three of the cutest little kittens you've ever seen. (You can see where this is going can't you?) these were 3 more, new kittens, and they were considerably younger than any of the others. Too new to have been taught to eat me. In fact, I think these cats were abandoned by their "parents". I don't know if they were dropped intentionally at our door, but there they were squeeking and crawling around our feet. I'm not sure they had been weaned yet, so I tried to feed them with a dropper. Only one of them took to it. I got a box from the pile of stuff I had taken out of the now empty garage, placed some old towels in it with a small bowl of milk. Then I shut them in our back porch so no evil adult cats could get to them to ruin our precious little angels. BWAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!!!!

So now we have three kittens. I think one is already claimed from somebody else and I'm pretty sure I have an idea who might like another. So, now I, a cat hater, have a cat. Rush out and buy stock in Claritin-D! It's my allergy medicine of choice. We haven't named them yet. We need your help on that point. So if you have any suggestions, leave it in the comment section.

So, as Bob Barker would say, "Help control the pet population. Have your dog or cat spayed or neutered!"