Gatos Diablos 18

    Well, friends, it's been many years now that this feline scourge has been terrorizing the bunnies of west Lakewood. Last night, the first victim of 2018 was encountered.
     I was at the show and received the following text from Jim "Your cat is attacking a baby bunny in the garage. I'm staying in the house."
     This was a group text, (side note, I've never been held hostage but I have been included in group chats) intended for Harper, who is said cats owner. Cats, plural, they are all hers. Harp tries to pawn Strumph off on me, but that cat and I never bonded. Jim calls her "Bitey", which remains as her gangsta moniker. As the black kitties have aged, Bitey has stepped in as the acting Godfather of the Cat Mafia. She takes orders from the olders, who sit fat around the house napping and eating like Marlon Brando. She is part of the younger generation, whose need to perform a kill for an audience is annoying to the elders, who roll their eyes, smooth their fur and return to dreamland, where they remember how much better things were back in the day; when the Gatos were subtle, quiet, stealthily leaving corpses in plain sight as they, the elders, sat quietly on a chair in the house and watched me turn on the hose.
     Gone are the days when decapitated bunnies were silently left on the back deck for me to discover every morning. I would hose down my back patio like a Jersey bodega owner. Ahh, the good old days. When bunnies were hunted at a second location, and quietly posed on my deck, headless and disemboweled, as a warning to anyone taking issue with The Diablos.
      This is the first year any of the mobsters have been seen doing the deed. Apparently, there was no attempt at hiding what she was doing. She deliberately performed her ritual in a well traveled location, which happens to be at the door between the house and garage.
       This blatant affront to the genteel manners of the previous generation is cause for concern. Is she more angry or less angry? When they would hunt at night and leave the mangled bodies for me to find in the morning, it made me wary when in their presence:what were they thinking? Their furry faces and milky eyes were inscrutable, and I gave them proper clearance when occupying the same room. But this? This is a challenge, the gauntlet is being thrown down publicly. The problem is that I have no idea what the gauntlet represents. I am unsure if this is over the gentle digestion cat food that the young Bitey finds to be insulting, or the lack of interference from humans when the dogs chase her down the hall.
       In the past, as I hosed the blood and guts off my deck, I would ruminate on the meaning of the display. I figured that the pattern was discernible from the the sky, and therefore it was actually a warning to both birds and bunnies alike: Stay Out. But to be caught in the act of attacking a  leporidae, the deed performed in front a my horrified husband, clutching his Keystone light and listening to SportsBallHockey, is a new tactic. Frozen with confusion, he did not know whether or not to intervene. Like any good bodega owner, Jim yelled at the cat, who froze with the bin in her mouth and looked up at him, long enough to release the unfortunate creature. "Hey, cut that out," is what my brave husband said to the offending gangster, who leveled him with a steely gaze as her prey scampered off.
       We tremble in fear awaiting the repercussions for our insolence. How dare any uppity human interfere with the work of the mob.
       Bitey passed by me as I was writing this, slowly, calculating the exact moment she can cause the most bother, disturbing my one quiet afternoon by leaping onto my laptop.
       It's best if I go now.