Cats and Rats

Dear Reader,

A Time for All Seasons, Ecc, 3:1. This story recounts what my recent activity as a semi-retired social science teacher and researcher is like. I have hundreds of stories, but this one seems entertaining to others. This entry shows I will not work in a chronological context. I hope to just write what I remember, when I feel like it. After all, I am semi-retired and in my 70s.  I am in the season of doing what I feel like.

Rats and Cats

I have led the most ridiculous life ever. I don't know if anyone has as much calamity as I do. At times I can laugh about it later, but at the time I cry: God why!!

To be clear, I am totally alone. Take just last week. I've have had a rat infestation. I live in the country and my cat died last year. I decided not to replace her, because I was going to be traveling some. I came home to rats everywhere. I trapped well over a dozen before I realized I had to replace my cat. I have been estranged from my husband for years, but he also lives in the country in another state, and has a barn full of cats. I asked him if I could come and get two and he said no. He said he loved all of his cats, but I can have 2 of his new kittens. (This is one reason that we're not together as he never wanted me to touch anything that's his.) So, I got two new kittens from him, but it would be months before they were big enough to catch mice, let alone rats.

However, a full-grown huge male cat was dumped at my house, and I had him neutered and named him Bowser as he looked like a boxer.  The problem was I think he must have been an inside all-the- time cat, because he didn’t seem to want to go out or know how to hunt.  But I needed him to go in the garage, where the rats were.  

Bowser:

And so the rat problem continued. My car heater would not work one cold morning, and I lifted the hood to find a rat's nest and the wiring had been chewed. I took it in to the service shop and they wanted $3,000 to fix the wiring in the dash and replace the motor on the car heater. I called my Estranged and told him what his refusal to help me had created. He replied he was not obligated to give me anything.

In the meantime, my grandson called me and said would I take his beautiful grey cat, called Noodles? He said the cat would have to go to the humane society as Noodles had been mean to his mom.  How can you say no to a distraught grandson? I took him in and made a home for him in my garage. I'd had to clean out a lot of the workshop just to make room for the cat and had put down a couple of old couch cushions and a blanket for him. I made friends with him, and he began to run off the rats. Yeah!

Now my first big cat decided he wanted to go outside, because he knew there was another cat outside. He began to yell and mark my house. So out Bowser went. But they began to fight. Horrendous fights. So, I solved the problem by letting the new cat, Noodles, live in the garage workshop. And then I could let one cat out at a time. Like I have nothing else to do but organize cat schedules.

But the house cat did not want to give up the fight. He was able to get on top of the workshop in the garage, because it had been built as a separate room inside. Bowser broke a small hole through the Styrofoam 4 ft x 8 ft. roofing tiles. And he continued the fight. For some reason I decided it was all my husband’s fault. If he would have given me two of his grown barn cats, they would have been used to each other and not fought, plus taken care of the rats. So, my Estranged came and fixed the hole in the roof of the workshop. He put a small piece of plywood, up, drilled holes and screwed the plywood into the two by fours in the ceiling.

But my house cat still would not give it up. I went to the store and the house cat sneaked into the garage, while the garage door was open. When I came back, I checked on the workshop cat, and an entire 4 ft by 8 ft section of the ceiling was down. The house cat walked out calmly after he fought the garage cat again.

My Estranged called me that night and I told him what happened. I asked him to come help me replace the 4x8-foot hole, and he said no and he began to laugh.  I said what are you laughing at, and he said because a cat outsmarted you. He thought it was funny. He was belly laughing, and he had never laughed around me.

Now I am in my seventies and the repair was not an easy thing to do. I drug myself out of bed the next morning, gathered all my tools and tried to put the 4x8 ft piece of foam tile back up. It was not easy. It went in crooked because I was near the top of a ladder, trying to hold it up with my head, and use the drill to make holes to insert 2 screws to anchor it. I eventually put a dozen screws in with the little plastic washers. I was proud of myself, but one corner was hanging down because it was not even with the ceiling metal forms the tile was supposed to fit in. There was a bunch of stacked wood in the way to get to that particular spot. I picked the wood up and leaned it against the wall.

To put up the tile, I moved everything to one side. For the screw I climbed up the ladder for the last time. As I said I'm old and I wear progressive lenses that distort things when I look at an angle. Coming back down the ladder I noticed a piece of wood had fallen down that I had leaned against the wall. I remember thinking on the last step I will have to step back over that piece of wood. However, the wood didn't slide onto the floor - it slid down at an angle and was at the second to the bottom step. When I stepped off to step over the wood I fell. I was stepping down two steps instead of one. I hung on to the ladder and I fell directly on top of two couch cushions that broke my fall to the concrete floor. I had dropped the drill. But as I lay there with the ladder on part of me, I said, Thank you God! What were the odds that I would fall exactly on the two little couch cushions in that big workshop? I had known for a long time that I would not die until the universe wanted me back. I have survived two floods and an ocean rip-tide. I went to an Iraqi combat zone with 17 missions out of the wire for a year.

If I would have fallen any place else but those little 2 ft by 2 ft couch cushions, I would have hit hard on the concrete floor. I am double cautious at everything because if I break a hip, my life, as I know it, will be over. I'm still sore, but nothing was hurt. I won't be calling my Estranged to tell him. Really, every week there is something undeniably stupid that happens to me. What is a girl alone to do? No neighbors, family, or friends. But that is another story or two.

Seek the Light,

Kate