Cat Wars: It's On

"Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose." -- Garrison Keillor

Cats.  Let me preface this post by making one thing clear.  I don't hate cats.  Much.  No, no, I really don't hate cats, but sometimes I strongly dislike them.  The ones I dislike are the feral cats that populate my neighborhood.  

K.C. taken through my office window

We live in an older neighborhood where a number of the houses are rentals.  It's not that the neighborhood has recently fallen on hard times, it has been this way for more than 100 years.  We live near a university, and some of the homes in our neighborhood were built as student boarding houses or supper clubs.  Then others have been converted from single family to apartments over the years.  It's a higgledy-piggledy neighborhood where homeowners, students, renters, professional people, hippies, professors, and sometimes borderline crazy people all live cheek to jowl on tree-lined streets.

And maybe it's not the renters/students who are to blame, but we have a population of feral cats.  These are not strays.  They are wild, and will not let anyone get within five feet of them (and that's for the tamer ones).  One of the neighbors feeds them I believe.  I know they used to feed them and were trying in vain to tame some of them.  Some of the cats have lived here for years, and we know them well by sight.  There is one fluffy gray and white cat that we first saw as a kitten under my husband's car.  He tried to entice it out with food and milk, but no doing.  Still, we have a fondness for that cat and it seems to tolerate us as well.

I'm not wild about the cat poop in my lawn and flower beds, but there's something much worse than that.  Murder.  The cats that really get me are the killer cats.  I know it's a cat's nature to hunt, but there is one Killer Cat (K.C.) who sits under my office window and periodically leaps up and tries to snatch birds right off the feeder.  He has succeeded, too. It's horrible to be sitting at my desk and hear a sudden squawk and look out to see a bird being torn to shreds.  I seem to have solved that problem by laying rose canes and other thorny branches under the feeder.  The birds and squirrels don't mind them, but K.C. stays back a bit.

But now K.C. is stalking a bunny rabbit.  A sweet little bunny rabbit! We haven't had rabbits in our neighborhood for quite a few years.  (Gosh, I wonder why?)  But just this summer a little bunny has ventured back.  I've seen it twice. Yesterday evening I also saw it being stalked by K.C.  I ran outside and chased the cat away but, of course, he came right back.  So I looked online for ways to deter cats, and a beautiful solution appeared.

I dug one of the kids' old Super Soakers out of the garage and filled it up.  The next time I saw the cat, I grabbed my water gun and headed out, shooting streams of water at the fleeing feline.  Then I circled the house to see if there were other cats lurking in the bushes.  I felt like John Wayne in some war movie.  This morning K.C. was back, sitting near the feeder in what used to be a fern bed (until the drought).  I crept out and got within eight to ten feet and let fly a stream of water.  K.C. fled across the street to the safety of the neighbor's yard.

K.C. in the neighbor's yard taken with extreme magnification.  Look at him, trying to look so innocent.

I have no idea if this will really keep the cat out of our yard, but it's worth a try.  Doesn't hurt the cat and makes me feel a little like Rambo.  (If Rambo carried a yellow and green plastic water gun.)