Saturday, March 29, 2008

Cats

Cats signify a remarkably important part of my Zamami life. They are so important, in fact, that I could see their effect on my morale as being a swing vote in a future year's 'stay or leave Zamami' recontracting decision. I've mentioned previously the 100+ cats that I encounter on my pre-dawn runs at the east end of the island, but I haven't given proper blog attention to the cats that reside around my house.

My neighbor feeds and doesn't control them. There is no spaying or neutering (proof of that showed up this morning). There is no regard given to the effects on the neighbors of supporting a 30+ member colony.


[A small sampling of the morning feeding]

I hate the cats. I throw rocks and full water bottles at them, often hitting my target. Any given week finds me waking up at least once or twice to screeching cats. The most has been three times in one night. The dilemma I find in cutting my grass is either maintaining a white trash residence or opening up the yard for use as a litter box. I cut my yard last week and each of the last three mornings I have cleaned up six piles of cat crap from the immediate area surrounding the path to my door - not even the majority of the yard! Keeping to a give-and-take relationship, I throw the piles back over the wall into my neighbor's yard.

The warnings my predecessor (Nick) has been giving me finally came to fruition this morning: kittens arrived. In my yard. Nick says that Zamami is overrun with cute little kittens for a month or so until they become too old to be fed by their mothers and they get infected eyes and suffer from malnutrition and disease. I wonder how my new kittens will fare with the "stick to the head" disease?

2 comments:

margaret said...

Dave,
Try spraying them with water rather than throwing things. Cats love to chase stuff thrown at them but they hate getting wet.

Dave said...

I don't have any outdoor water! I rarely hit the cats anymore as they bolt at the sight or sound of me. But now they've habituated to using my yard at night. I think there are just too many of them to expect they'll leave my huge litterbox alone. In the meantime, I'm working on maybe moving. That is probably the best solution for all parties, I think.