With a population the majority of which is retired folks you have within this small town a considerable amount of time spent on lawn and garden maintenance. There are some people that work all day clipping and snipping keeping their property looking beautiful. A great way to keep active and needless to say a great source of pride in doing so.
Now comes the core of the drama. Cats. Lots of domestic cats allowed to wander about and then due to folks that feel sorry for those cats not so fortunate to have homes lots of feral cats living under buildings and within abandoned structures. In the spring of 2015 there was a real problem with the number of both populations. I'd see them hopping in and out of garbage cans in the alleyways left uncovered and of course come across areas in my flower beds they had used as cat boxes. The lady across the street whose yard is just immaculately kept was just beside herself. The ferals and a crew of domestics were using her hedges and display garden as a playground. After listening to her complain about this problem I encouraged her to call the city and talk to the owner of the domestics that lived a few houses away. Turns out that lady fed the ferals in her abandoned garage all winter which explained why they were in our neighborhood.
After trying to just be a good listener hoping my neighbor would push the city into action I said well if you want to borrow my live trap you can. Then just call the cops and they'll come and pick up the cats. I had called them myself inquiring about what they were doing about the problem.
The first day the neighbor had the trap the cops had to come twice within the first couple hours. Then it was pretty much one a day for a week mostly ferals. If my neighbor wasn't going to be home I'd set the trap at my yard and within a short time had caught 7 or 8 cats just on my side of the street in addition to the several that the neighbor had caught. I am not a cat hater by any means it's just that this was a real problem. In the mean time word was out around town that my neighbor and I were "cat catchers" as they referred to us. The cops were in the neighborhood almost daily for over 2 weeks.
Despite our efforts to get the city to deal with the issue the domestics still kept coming into my neighbors garden areas and using her whole yard as a cat box. They'd break off plants, lay down in the flowers and just set up vigils at the bird baths. Then I was up early one morning and walked across the street to check the trap at my neighbors. As I walked around the hedge I could see something in the trap. I watched for a few seconds when I saw black and white and I mean a stripe of white on the back! I laughed to myself knowing what had happened as I also then picked up the faint odor of skunk! It was just after 6 a.m. too early to wake anybody up over a skunk in a trap so I went home and continued on my morning routine of coffee and surfing the news. I lost track of time until my doorbell rang around 9 0clock I guess. As I walked to the front door there stood my neighbor. Oh my gosh I thought I hope she didn't get sprayed! That thankfully wasn't the case as she explained what she had found when she went out to check her garden coffee in hand. I started laughing before she revealed the part about the skunk and she said, "oh did you already know? why I could have been sprayed by that damn thing!" For second I thought I might be in trouble but I quickly added it was too early to wake anybody and I lost track of the time you see... No worries there. I suggested a call to the police.
Officer Nathan rode up minutes later and took a look surveying the situation. I stayed on my side of the street! After 15 minutes or so of walking back and forth trying to figure out how to get this thing out of the yard I walked over to see what he was proposing to do." Well can't shoot him cause it's in town. Spose we could drop a cover on the cage and just walk it to the truck and take him out to the landfill and then shoot him". Just then here comes one of the city employees with the city backhoe. I said "Hey ask Roger he'll know what to do". So officer Nathan flags down the backhoe and the two of them formulate a plan. They decided to lift officer Nathan up in the backhoe bucket over the hedge so he could drop a blanket over the cage then hook a chain to the trap so Roger could then hoist officer Nathan back over the hedge with the cage dangling from the bucket. Then they could put the cage covered in the backhoe and officer Nathan would follow Roger out of town so he could then dispose of the skunk!
I stayed on my side of the street watching the plan in action. What a spectacle! Off they went out of town. I had told officer Nathan that was my trap and I wanted to make sure I got it back. No problem he said I'll bring it right back. It got to be middle of the afternoon and the neighbor and I were both taking a break from lawn and garden maintenance. I said I wondered when my trap was coming back and just at that moment here comes the police vehicle down the street. Officer Nathan gets out and is wearing only a t shirt and not his regular uniform. I can smell skunk pretty strongly. How did it go? Well when I bent down to shoot him in the cage just as I was going to shoot he turned around and shot me first! He said he would have been back sooner but he had to go home and change out of his uniform. He informed me the cost of over 600 dollars including his Kevlar vest was probably a loss as you just can't get that smell out!
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| An unwelcome visitor. Elliot a well known cat in the neighborhood has claimed my neighbors garden as his domain much to her dismay. We caught him once but his owner refuses to deal with the issue. |
So the story made for good conversation that summer but hard feelings still existed between people on opposing sides of the problem. The city did actively communicate to those people feeding feral's finally but my neighbor was still plagued by the domestics from down the street.
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