Wild and domestic

I drove home from work on Monday night, anxious and panicky about the annual spring onslaught. Every time I thought that I had an organized list of things to do in my mind, I'd remember yet another thing that I had to do. I arrived home at 6:30, feeling completely overwhelmed and not nearly equal to the tasks at hand. Sometimes, all I can do is wait for the panic to subside; but sometimes, exercise helps. With 45 minutes or so of daylight remaining, I decided to take a walk.

I was about two blocks from home as dusk began to fall, and I saw what I thought was a medium-sized red dog running across the street about half a block in front of me. And then I realized that dogs don't have big fluffy tails. It was a fox. It stopped in the middle of the road and looked at me for a second, and then it kept running.

Crap, I thought to myself (as opposed to thinking to other people, I guess). They're not still supposed to be out in daylight, are they? I mean, it was getting dark, but it wasn't dark yet. What if it's rabid? What if it's aggressive? Should I turn and walk the other way?

No. If I'm brave enough to walk right past a snake (yes, I know that it was an imaginary snake, but I didn't know that until AFTER I decided to walk past it, so bravery credit still applies) then I can be brave enough to walk past a fox that has, after all, already run away. Unless it's lying in wait, ready to ambush me.

A stick! I have no hope of outrunning the thing, but I can fight it off with a stick. My neighborhood is full of trees, so there's no shortage of sticks, and it took me only a minute to find a nice stout stick with a sharp, pointy end suitable for fox-poking. Nothing in my entire life has prepared me for hand-to-hand combat with a wild animal, even armed with a stick, but it was better than nothing. I walked the rest of the way home without incident.

*****
I have a crazy neighbor. You'll have to take my word for that, because I can't share much detail. In addition to being crazy (or perhaps it's a symptom or manifestation of his craziness), he keeps his house in a state of disrepair that makes "ramshackle" a kind description of the place.  Unsurprisingly, he has a problem with rodents, including raccoons. Being crazy, he decided to set traps to catch the raccoons.

Crazy or not (crazy--trust me), he's a competent raccoon trapper, because he caught one right away. Then he called my husband.  In all fairness, everyone calls my husband. He's can fix almost anything, and he's very good in a crisis. And although my neighbor is a batshit raving lunatic, I share his conviction that a trapped raccoon in one's backyard is a crisis. I don't, however, agree that the solution to that crisis is to call the neighborhood police officer and expect him to immediately come and shoot the raccoon with his service revolver.

See? I TOLD you he's crazy. After my husband diplomatically disabused him of the notion that police officers can moonlight as raccoon hit men, crazy neighbor decided, as a crazy person would, to leave it in the trap until it died. I'm no friend to rodents, and raccoons are among my least favorite of these vile creatures. But leaving it a cage to starve in the freezing cold is beyond the pale. I told my husband to call animal control. He sighed. "I will," he said. "But he'll give me a hard time about it."

"Why?" I asked. "They'll come and take it and release it on the Henson Trail, and he won't have to deal with it. Problem solved."

"That was what I told him to do," my husband said. "He didn't want to release it, because he's sure that it will make its way back."

Again--Crazy. The man has two broken windows and a gaping hole in the siding on one side of his house alone. When the snow came (yes, snow, on March fucking 20th--Maryland weather is an asshole), every raccoon in Silver Spring sought shelter in his house. He's lucky that we don't have many bears around here, because there's nothing stopping one from hibernating in his garage.

*****
As the rest of the week passed, I had no interaction with the animal kingdom, until today (Saturday). My 13-year-old is taking care of another (not crazy) neighbor's cats for the week. Our neighbor dropped off her keys on her way out of town; she had already fed the cats but encouraged my son to stop by to visit and give the cats a treat.

Both of the cats are old; 15 or so. The male, an orange tabby, has been with my neighbor since he was a kitten, and she told us that he is very friendly and comfortable around strangers. The other cat, a gray and white mixed breed, is new to the household. My neighbor adopted him when her friend became too ill to care for her. She told us that the gray cat is skittish and afraid of strangers.

The cats were exactly as advertised. The male tabby, Enu, is a cat-dog. He ran to the door and greeted us happily as we entered. Kelly, the shy cat, ran down the basement stairs as soon as she saw us, and she never appeared again.

Enu followed us eagerly around the house. We petted him and fed him treats, changed his water, and checked the litter boxes, and got ready to leave. The cat followed us to the door. "Don't let him out," I told my son.

"He likes to go out," my son said. "I almost forgot--Mrs. V said to let him out in the yard for a few minutes."

"OK," I said. "But let's make sure that the gate is closed."

I no sooner said the words then the crazy cat took off running and got right through the barely cracked front door before I could close it. I ran after him.

Remember that this cat is 15 years old. He's also obese, probably morbidly so in cat terms. I hadn't expected that an elderly, overweight cat would be a flight risk, but trust me, this geriatric feline fat-ass could run like the damn wind. But then he stopped, right in the middle of the front yard. He didn't appear winded; I think he just wanted to drink in the sunshine and freedom for a minute.  So we waited as he scampered around the yard, sniffing at trees and rocks like a dog.

"OK," I said to my son. "It's time to go. Let's bring him in." The cat allowed me to pick him up, but he started to fight me as we got nearer the house, finally breaking free and running back across the yard.

Remember again: This cat is about as old as cats get, and in serious need of diet and exercise, at least one of which it was getting by outrunning me (which admittedly is not hard to do). I chased him across the street, and managed to direct him back again to his own front yard. Fiendishly clever, he ran under the car and then catloafed, tail contentedly wagging, keeping time like a metronome. He knew that I couldn't get to him from where he was, and I knew that he knew, and he knew that I knew. We had ourselves a cat-human standoff.

The cat, smug and compact, was obviously enjoying himself tremendously. Every part of his body, from the serene face to the paws cozily tucked close to his body to the rotund torso to the thumping tail seemed to ask "What now? What are you going to do?" And I didn't know, other than to either crawl under the car (no) or to just wait him out. And then I heard a rustle.

My son had run back inside to get the bag of treats. "I just remembered that Mrs. V said to shake the treats, and he'll come back in." And he was right. Between the freedom of the outdoors and a delicious cat treat, there was no contest. Fatso couldn't resist the siren call of food, and we got him safely inside.

*****
It's Sunday night now. The rest of the family are on spring break, and I'll be joining them on Thursday. For now, it's three days in the world of people with (I hope) no unwanted encounters with the animal kingdom, wild or domestic.