The Cat From Hell

The alarm is sounded: "there's orange kitty again!" and the chase is on! The daily battle of wills - or wits - begins. I cannot believe the two year old cat that visits our yard and deck constantly in his daily hunt for birds! He is totally impervious to "scat, shoo, get lost kitty!" and even the garden hose on jet stream dows nothing to discourage him. He sits under a tree near the deck and watches the finches at the feeders until we chase him away. A few minutes later he is back We have taken to tossing an old running shoe at him, and even though we miss by a mile, that does cause him to go running across the yard. As he nears his owner's property he stops, sits down and proceeds to lick himself - the manner can only be interpreted as pure insolence. Oh yes, he belongs to one of the immediate neighbours.

What to do? Complaints fall on deaf ears - "he's just being a cat." Apparently there are by-laws against nuisance animals and if a complaint is laid the animal control people will come out and trap the animal humanely. The owners will then be asked to keep their animal on their own property or risk having it permanently picked up. But no one wants to make the 'official' complaint; we must think of the neighbours' feelings. If "good fences make good neighbours" I think an even better adage should be "people who take responsibility for their animals make good neighbours"!