There are many roles a husband and father has to play: teacher, coach, protector, only person in the house who keeps things plugged in and charged. The one that no one told me about was pest control/Crocodile Hunter. That’s mostly thanks to the four legged menace my wife calls our cat, but I call her cat.
Our cat hates being cooped up, so we cat doors leading to the great wilderness that is our suburban neighborhood. The cat is an ice cold psycho and kills an animal about every seven days. Other times, the cat decides the vermin needs to see what we’ve done around the house, usually at about 3 am. The cat has brought us (alive) a rabbit, so many mice and chipmunks that I’ve lost count and even a bird. I thought it was dead…until I picked it up. Last Monday I tried to chase a mouse out of the door, but it decided to hide in the coat closet, which slants to a point, so I had to remove every single thing in there at 6 am as I tried to reach it with a broom. It escaped and we couldn’t find it until 9:30.
Oh and complicating the entire matter is that my wife is TERRIFIED of mice. So, every time this happens, I’m on call like a firefighter to help her and also protect my kids from seeing the cat maul the animal right in front of them. Yesterday, I got a call from my mother in law that a squirrel was flopping around the yard. It appeared the serial kitten had struck again, while my daughter was yelling “Why is the squirrel doing that?” I got home and it was gone. I quickly scooped it with a shovel and ran it over to the trash can. In my haste, with the lid trying to close back down, the squirrel’s arm got caught on the edge. Rigor mortis had set in, so it was propped up, staring at me with its black eyes, arm on the edge like it was posing for a senior picture. I almost took a picture, as it was too perfect, but whatever sense of morality and my daughter possibly coming around the corner at any second held me back. The problem? It was stuck now. I had to use the dog’s pooper scooper to pick it up and get the arm off the edge. My daughter ran up a minute later and asked where the squirrel was and if it bit me. I told her the vet picked it up to help it. Now to see if the vet will pick up the murder cat.
Not to worry, however, the cat made sure to demand three treats by meowing its high pitched call to Satan last night, so it’s not all death and torture. Sometimes just dark necromancy in feline wails at all hours of the night. I’m spending today looking for holy water and good stout crucifix so maybe I can drive this thing into the abyss it came from.