Murder Most Foul

No one expects to wake up on a lazy Saturday morning to find your lounge to be the scene of a brutal murder. Carnage is exactly what I awoken to this past weekend. What makes it worse is that this was not the first time. This wasn’t even the second time. No, this has happened many times before. You see, I share my house with serial killers and one (or maybe all of them) regressed back to their wild natural instincts and another pigeon’s family is now missing a member. As I was cleaning up the murder scene, I could not help but ponder on the joys of owning cats or should I rather say cats owning us.

At roughly 9’o clock on Saturday morning my peaceful slumber was rudely awakened by my door bell. As I answered the intercom a voice on the other side mumbled “Delivery”. My patio’s lounge set has arrived! My excitement soon turned into revulsion as felt something wet under my foot. As my eyes hesitantly wondered down I noticed I was standing in a small pool of blood, precisely something I yearn for on an empty stomach first thing in the morning. Mortified I turned around to discover the whole area from my study to my lounge covered with the evidence of a struggle. Damn, another murder! With the delivery men waiting for me to let them in, I had to swallow my disgust, wipe the still warm blood of my foot, go outside and let them in pretending not to possibly be hiding a dead avian body under my coffee table or being Norman Bates’ mother.

After the delivery men finished unloading our furniture I headed back inside the house of horror to go and inspect the extent of the massacre and search for the corps. It looked like a feather pillow exploded in my lounge, aesthetically very unappealing and the fact that I am allergic to feathers also didn’t help much to improve the situation. Quite annoyed I called our cats but they pretended to be temporarily hard of hearing probably because they could tell from my voice daddy wasn’t amused. After I finished cleaning up the murder scene one thing troubled me. I couldn’t find the body. I searched high and low and nothing, not even a beak or a toe nail. The only reasonable deduction that could be made was that whoever killed John Dove also ate him!!!

Not knowing who the culprit was all of them would now have to be dewormed and another creative exercise of let’s hide the medication in your food and pretend I didn’t while you stare at me with those “do you think I am stupid, I saw you spike my food” looks! Promptly followed by “If you don’t eat it I will have to force open your mouth and shove a tablet down your throat” and ending with screaming and scratching. A full hour passed before my little fur balls decided to crawl out of their respective hiding places pretending like nothing had happened and all four being the pinnacle of innocence and good behaviour. With their hearing now miraculously restored they marched straight to the fridge demanding a tasty bowl of milk to wash down their pigeon Carpaccio breakfast.

Apart from being a competent bird, lizard and mice assassin who kill for sport and not necessity our little one now also is reaching maturity. She is almost 6 months old and hormones are starting to kick in signalling it’s time to get her spayed. The first time I noticed something was up was last week. Lying on the sofa watching television she climbed onto my leg and started to hump it. This is not normal behaviour for a female cat and hubby even jokingly commented that maybe she’s a lesbian. At first I thought it was funny, even cute but when it happened again the next evening it wasn’t funny anymore. You see, every time I would move my leg she’d make faint cat sex noises, bite into my leg and her innocent demeanour soon turned a tad slutty and I was starting to feel violated. It was decided there and then that an urgent appointment must be made at the vet before she discovers tom cats and gets knocked up or god forbid falls in love with my leg.

We have gone through many pregnancies and litters with our two older cats before and even though kittens are adorable there is nothing more unpleasant than a cat in heat: The crawling around on the floor, the trying to procreate with anything that has a pulse and not to mention those ungodly noises in the dead of night. I hardly survived the previous episodes and have no burning desire to relive that experience, so hubby found a vet and an appointment was promptly made.

Our baby is scheduled to go to the vet tomorrow. It breaks my heart to think that she will have to spend the night there alone, in a cage, scared, hungry and confused, wondering whether she’s being punished for killing that damn pigeon. Our new vet is very sympathetic and it was explained that our kitten had to spend the night there to make sure that she doesn’t eat anything before the operation on Wednesday morning. Our baby loves her food and this will be real torture for her, something I am sure she will remember for years to come and ensure hubby and I will be punished every opportunity she gets. Knowing her, I am also convinced that she will milk this vet experience for all it’s worth, playing on our guilty conscience having us comply with every demand for bowls of milk and countless other treats as we did with all the others.

Nikita (the neurotic one), Mizou (the smart one), Sasha (the cute one) and Katija (the mischievous one) have brought as much joy to our lives as they do trouble. Even though hubby and I regularly have to clean up their coughed up fur balls, their muddy paw prints, bloody crime scenes and break up fights I could not imagine our lives without them. Even though their feline egos may prevent them from overly expressing their love for us, I know they do too. It’s just a pity that one of the ways they do show it is with dead birds, mice, lizards, rabbits, snakes, frogs and insects.

Till next time.

Kathy Griffin does the Bible Belt