Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Squirels, cats and bats - oh my!

Ok, so for a long time now, I've been plagued by the squirels that live on my roof and love to run across the cable wires to the apartment across the alley. I'm not bothered by the squirels themselves, but rather by my cat who is fascinated with them - and with trying to attack them. This wouldn't be a problem if she could watch the squirels from another room, but she has to be in the same room as me at all times. Squirels get up much earlier in the morning than I like to, which means I have to listen to my cat meowing and pawing at the window and blinds first thing in the morning.

Katy (the cat) gets really wound up by these squirels and will often try to actually jump at them, as she does not understand the concept of gravity and windows. One early morning last summer, she took off running at full speed at a squirel on the wire and hit the screen. I had just recentlly gotten new windows and when she hit the screen, instead of stopping her like my old screens did, she FLEW out the second story window to a concrete alley below. I grabbed my glasses and ran full speed out the door and down the stairs in my pajamas, thankfully finding a perfectly terrified but healthy cat. She's an indoor only beast, and the big wide outside was just more than she could handle. I think these new screens are somehow fire safety, or something, because they pop out of the window *so* easily.

Now, you would think she would've learned a valuable lesson about gravity and the sysiphian nature of her attack on the squirels. Nope. She's just as much a squirel fanatic as before. Only now, I have to make sure I don't open the window wide enough for her to knock the screen out, and instead she rams herself against the window.

Then it gets worse.

Last night, I notice she's going apeshit over something she can see out of the window of my bedroom and everytime I drag her into another room, she goes running (full speed) back to the bedroom to the window. So, I go into my room and look out the window and see little dark flashes going by the window. Turning off the lights confirmed my suspicions: bats. Lots of them. Now my cat has something to "chase", in my bedroom, at all hours when I might possibly want to sleep. I hope bats are just seasonal. *ugh*

2 comments:

  1. But they are so cute when they actually catch what they are hunting. Our little huntress lined up a whole family (6) on the garage steps for us after one night of work.
    From the small number of samples I have the female cats are more manic about hunting then the males. From the name of your cat I'm guessing that doesn't help ;)

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  2. My little "hunter" is indoor only. The only thing she catches are spiders, and she usually howls and desperately searches for them *after* she's eaten them.
    Fortunately, the bats seemed to have gone elsewhere to hunt. I only see one or two every now and again.

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