It's summer. Summer is many things. Summer is the time for backyard cookouts. And vacations. And opressive unbearable heat, if you live where I do. And, if you just happen to live where I do, summer is also known as cat season. Our neighbors - on both sides - are well known for feeding stray cats. Thankfully, the neighbor on the east side came to her senses and stopped. But the neighbor on the west side, who is a bit...eccentric is the word I'll choose to use...still has a few semi-feral cats. I say "semi" because they sometimes go into his house, but most of the time can be found lounging in the shade under his various cars, looking particularly underfed and scrawny. When they're not lounging, they're fighting among themselves or with the other neighborhood cats. He's had code enforcement called about his collections of junk that hides mostly in the back but sometimes starts to creep into the front, and Animal Control was finally called out to help resolve the problem of the booming cat population after several conversations and numerous complaints. For a little while, once the main population of females had been removed, the problems of fighting and spraying had abated to almost nothing. Lately I've noticed they've picked back up - ever since the neighbor acquired a fourth cat. Cat number four is a calico. You do the math.
As I was in the kitchen giving my son a snack earlier this evening I saw something in the backyard out of the corner of my eye. I turned and watched the neighbor's little calico walk across my yard. I'd seen the semi-strays from next door do this before. It only meant one thing. I waited a couple of minutes, then I walked out back to the end of my yard where a couple of fence panels were propped against our fence. I bent down and looked behind them and saw four small furry shapes. I still can't figure out what it is about those fence panels that makes these cats think this is a secure place for their kittens. This is at least the third litter I've found alive back there. Many more get moved to new hiding places, or disease or predators get them.
I called my husband when I got back in the house. I know that he's the only thing keeping me from having a house full of pets. We already have a dog and a cat that don't get enough of the attention they deserve, so taking these kittens in wasn't even an option. But there was no way I could in good consience leave them outside. The only choice I had was to grab the cat carrier, take it outside and gather those kittens up...which was harder than you'd expect, seeing as they were about five or six week old little fluff-balls and it should have been a simple seek and scoop mission. They seemed to have disappeared in the few minutes it took to make a call and find the carrier. Then I looked around the other side and heard a scrabbling noise on the panel closest to me. The little bastards had moved from between my fence and the third loose panel where there was a lot of room to get in and grab them, to a tiny space between the other panels, where they were basically unreachable. So, posessing slightly more reasoning ability than a kitten, I figured that if I moved the panels I'd be able to get to the kitties. Down onto the ground went the first panel. No kitties. So down comes panel number two. And there, midway up the third panel is a hissing, spitting black bundle of baby cat fury trying with all its might to climb away from me. So I reached over and grabbed it by the scruff of its tiny neck and placed it gently in the cat carrier, where it continued to hiss and growl at me. The other three - a marmalade tabby, most likely a male (looking much like two of the neighbors current male cats), a brown striped tabby (looking like the neighbor's third male, which is more than likely a half-sibling of my cat and was probably fathered by one of the orange tabbies), and a little calico, just like the mother cat - came along more quietly.
I then instructed my son to get some shoes on and we both walked over the the neighbor's house. I knocked. I noticed that a rude message was scratched into the glass on the jalousie panels on the front door. The neighbor called from inside "What is it", and I answered back "I have something for you". When he answered the door I noticed two things: first, the inside of the house looked disgusting and second, a smell that eminanted from the living room matched what I could glimpse from the open doorway. The predominant odors seemed to be body odor, garbage and cat urine. I held up the cat carrier. Neighbor says "Oh, you found them. We were wondering where they'd gone". Apparently the calico had them in the car port, then moved them to the back porch, and then very recently moved them to my back yard. I'm sorry, but what kind of person knows that a cat that they feed had babies on their property and doesn't get concerned when they disappear? Personally, I'd be a wreck with guilt. Of course, I'm a soft-touch when it comes to animals. But still - this isn't the country. These aren't barn cats. This man has seen cats poisoned, hit by cars, just disappear, and found the remains of countless kittens that just weren't strong or lucky enough to survive into adulthood, and yet still refuses to get his animals (I hesitate to call them "pets") spayed and neutered and confined to his own property for their own welfare. I think it displays a certain calousness of attitude that I just can't tolerate. And he has the nerve to ask me what he's supposed to do with these kittens? And give me a lecture about how cruel it was that we had our indoor-only cat front-declawed?
I helped him transfer all four kittens (the black one hissing and spitting the whole time) into a carrier he had, and told him I didn't really care what he did with them, since they were
his problem, and that the animal shelter was probably the best place for them. He said "I think the mama cat will be mad when she finds out her babies have been moved...", and as I was walking back across my yard I looked back and said "Well, better four live kittens in a carrier in your house, than four dead kittens in my back yard". I would not be surprised if in the coming weeks I see all four kittens running around his car port. And it wouldn't surprise me either if they disappeared one by one. If karma exists, and reincarnation is possible, maybe that man will come back as a stray cat that someone feeds just enough to keep barely alive but otherwise doesn't give a second thought about.
UPDATE: So, I give my neighbor "his" kittens on Saturday evening. Sunday evening, what does my husband find while getting ready to mow the yard? The kittens.
The same damn ones. In the
same damn place I found them Saturday. They were promptly caught again. Only this time, I've learned my lesson. They were delivered to the emergency vet clinic up the road and surrendered as strays. They'll go to the local SPCA for evaluation and to be adopted out, if they can be. My husband has decided that since the neighbor wants to be so careless with animals, that he doesn't deserve to have any to barely care about. The rest will be trapped and Animal Services will be called.
Check out the 
There are rumblings in the school system for the county I live in that due to a precipitous drop in enrollment expected over the next few years, several older or less crowded elementary schools may be closed. Isn't that just great?! For years they've been bemoaning the population growth here that went hand in hand with congestion and overcrowded schools, and now because of the ridiculous cost of living people with school-age children are moving away, and more child-less residents are moving in to take their place. So there's a good chance my son's school, which he hasn't even gotten to attend yet, will close after this coming school year. Which means instead of a close neighborhood school, he'd have to adjust to going to one across town. Maybe his dream will come true and he'll actually get to be a bus rider. Except, I imagine the shine to wear off and the morning ritual to go something like this: 