29 June 2015
In past summers I have enjoyed sitting on my back deck with my morning coffee. Smelling the Colorado air, listening to the birds happily chirp away, wondering if the peach tree will come back this year. I even put a hammock back there.
Last summer, I scaled my backyard respites back because every morning when I awoke, I was greeted with beheaded bunnies strewn across the porch outside the sliding glass door. And rats, and mice and birds. All beheaded. All strewn on the concrete porch, next to the deck and in front of the sliding glass door. Placed precisely as if for display.
I know my cats are killers. We have tried the bell thing but they just take off the collars. But for years I never saw the carnage, because they had a pact with the foxes next door: "We'll kill it and leave it on our porch, you can eat it." It was a beautiful example of nature in balance.
But then last year, the fox den disappeared. There have been at least eight dens that I counted on our block alone. But last year, no pups. No adults. No dens. Gone. Vanished. I haven't seen a fox up here in two years.
With nature out of balance, the cats began killing for, what I can only guess is, sport.
I would pull out my garden hose every morning and wash off the patio like a Jersey Bodega owner. I stopped walking into the yard as I feared stepping on severed heads.
This year I have only two words: The Hell?
The escalation in violence is unsettling. Instead of ripping off the bunnies' heads, the cats have started bringing them, alive and chewed up, into the house.
Last year I assumed they were leaving the heads around as either a warning to other cat gangs, or as an invitation for the fox to return.
Now I believe they are warning me.
In May I found one terrified baby bunny downstairs in Jim's bathroom, cowering in the corner. He seemed unscathed and I set him free.
A week later we found another one downstairs, again. This one was wonky on her feet (we don't actually know if they are male or female, we just decide based on personalities) so we kept her. Genoa insisted that she was too shaken up to return to the wild, and it had at that point been raining for weeks and we weren't sure it was best to set her free in the rain. Which is stupid, she's a bunny, they live outdoors. We kept her over night and she died. No marks on her, we think the dog barked and scared her to death. Apparently baby bunnies have a self destruct mechanism that engages when they are too scared. It saves them the pain of being ripped apart.
While we were in Florida, my sister found another bunny at the bottom of the stairs. This one was dazed and also had no exterior wounds, and made friends with the lizard before being set free. I was not here, and therefore not available to make the official determination of male or female.
This morning I had to shoo Strumph away from a bunny she was chewing on in the rock garden. Strumph seemed to be playing, the bunny was not. The poor thing literally had its ass chewed, but was otherwise OK. I had to spray Strumph with the spray bottle we use for the lizard and then forcibly grab her by the scruff and chuck her in the house, (while navigating around unidentifiable guts), where she immediately started a fight with the other cats. Maybe they have a steroid problem?
Worse than the beheading has been the disemboweling.
Some mornings there may not even been a part of the animal, only its internal organs, which the flies are congregating on, plopped on the patio. Splat.
One of the cats puked in the house the other day, and when Harper cleaned it up she declared "there's part of a rat or something here."
I am not sure if the gang of Gatos Diablo are now just gutting their prey for fun or if they are serial killers who are devolving. ( I watch a lot of Criminal Minds.)
I like the name of the gang "Gatos Diablo" even though I'm pretty sure it's grammatically incorrect. If it's incorrect, they would tell me, Every morning when Jim gets up and the gang meows at him he says "You know I don't speak Spanish".
And because I don't speak Spanish, nor can I decipher the symbolism of disemboweling, I have no idea what the cats are warning me about. Are they dissatisfied with their brand of cat food? Am I to feed them fresh salmon? How can I fix it if I don't know what "it" is?
For the most part they leave their catch on the patio by the sliding door, not the deck itself. The deck, picnic table and grill seem to be off limits for some reason. I could, technically, have coffee on that side, but that's where the sun is strongest in the morning, it's more conducive to evening wine than morning coffee.
My own fears of catching the hantavirus ( HI KEN) or that other one you contract from being bitten by a flea from a dead animal, have been exacerbated. With the carnage mounting daily, I am hesitant to hose off the patio for fear I will disturb the fleas, and one will bite me, and I will die. My hammock was moved to the back of the yard for mowing, and I won't cross the yard to retrieve it, not even with shoes on. There are too many rotting corpses and internal organs out there that I know about, how many never made it to the patio to be hosed off? It's a Big Death Yard back there. I haven't enjoyed my morning coffee outside at home in two years. I'm cowering at the kitchen counter, looking longingly at the sunshine outside as I type this and drink my coffee.
This morning as I rolled the lizard out to his sun spot, on the other side of the deck, the "safe" side by the grill, I was horrified to discover another pile of guts. In the Safe Zone!
What does it mean?
Harper just handed me Strumph and said "explain to her she can't just beat up the other cats."
I held the tiny kitty and looked into her eyes. And I said "stop being a bully". But she just blinked at me. She does not understand Because I don't speak Spanish!
I'm doomed.
