View from the North 40: Invasion of the food snatcher

I have a cat burglar. Not the stealthy, romanticized thief-in-black who scales walls to steal valuables from upper stories of a home or business. I’m talking about an actual cat who burgles and who, by the way, is an unpleasant sort, a sneak-about in the dark and a brutish thug.

And, yes, that last one is the real rub.

This mean bully is picking on my Tony-O kitty, our resident, one-quarter feral shop cat who is often referred to as “handsome man” and “best cat ever,” and that interloper has given Tony two battle wounds this week alone.

I do not like that, and in the immortal words of Looney Tunes’ Marvin the Martian: “Oh, this makes me very angry, very angry indeed.”

Early Thursday morning, as I finished my chores, I heard the high-pitched screeching-growl of felines engaging in a dust up in our shop, so I sprinted to Tony’s rescue. (Yes, I can still sprint and, yes, it did occur to me that I should not be running that fast on a gravel road in the dark, but Tony is family and no one else was there for backup.)

I burst into the building like a standard-issue hero and hollered for them to break it up. Then I tracked the sound of a rumbling growl to one of the dark alcoves in the building — thinking that it was Tony still defending his territory now that I had his six.

Imagine my outrage when I discovered a very large, very dark haired, very not-Tony cat growling in the shadows.

Of course, I put the run on that nonsense.

I also spent the better part of the afternoon in the shop putting the finish coats of lacquer on some boards and keeping an eye on my wounded buddy. Tony was skittish all day — no doubt worried about that feral cat coming back and turning me into a crazy woman again. I understand. I was a little over the top.

Watching him jump and stare with wild eyes at every sound and movement, a cat reverting to his feral ways for survival, fueled my brain into devising a plan to protect him.

Maybe it was the two-and-a-half hours worth of wood lacquer fumes talking, but I told my husband we were going to have to buy a motion sensor alarm, a night-vision security camera, a pellet gun that shoots those plastic BBs, a sniper-grade rifle tripod and a remote trigger system so the next time that big feline goon comes to steal food from our kitty we would be set to show him who was top gangster around here.

John suggested that maybe paint balls would be a safer, less likely to poke its eye out, option for our ordinance (like the rest of that shopping list was a reality), but I liked where he was going with that. Put an identifying mark of shame on the cat, like a splotch of Cain. Maybe make it glow-in-the-dark paint.

Evening chores didn’t get done until after dark last night, but I could see by the moonlight that Tony had joined me in the barn, tucked in under our special faded-green lawn chair as he waited for his turn for attention.

Work done, I eased into the plastic seat and smiled as Tony purred, rubbed his body along my calf and jumped into my lap then stretched himself up the front of my body. He purred and I petted as I told him of my elaborate evil plan.

“You know, though,” I ended up admitting, “what’s really going to happen is that we’re going to lock up your food at night in hopes that without a food source that big meany will move along to a shop or barn where it’s wanted. And if that doesn’t work we’ll just live trap it and find a home for it. This might take a while.”

Tony pointed his contented little face at me, peeked his yellow eyes at me through droopy eyelids and purred like he had faith we’d make it all right.

Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to using the live trap. The last time we did that it was to get rid of a raccoon — which ended up finding its way back here again, hungrier and angrier than ever and too smart to fall for that food-in-a-trap ploy a second time.

(Home invasion fails: two for a dollar, and all-you-can-eat-catfood bar: free, at [email protected].)