I hate my cat. I am not a cat person, apologies to all of you who are but I have a cat for one reason only. To kill the bugs and little rodents around my house. Actually I don’t have mice in my house anymore unless the damn cat brings one in but when we lived at our other house she was a veritable mouse and bat killer.

The old house had always had a problem with mice. Before I got the cat I tried every humane way to get rid of the little beasties. I used this plastic no kill tube like thing that I was supposed to load with peanut butter. The mouse could get in but not back out. I don’t remember how he was supposed to be released into the wild (only to find his way back into the house) but it didn’t work. I also tried these little plates of glue with some birdseed stuck to it. This was not a no kill way since the mouse was supposed to get stuck and unless someone peeled it off it would starve to death and die. The directions said to just toss it out when it was full. Sort of like fly paper for mice I guess. These caught the dog but no mice. From there I resorted to mouse traps. These worked better except their little guts would be splattered all over the floor. I also caught my son’s fingers and the dog’s nose too many times to count. I did not want to resort to D Con since I had a toddler running around.

On Christmas, my neighbor sent me an email with a picture of 4 or 5 little kittens in it. Her friend had some kittens and they needed a home. Why not? So the cat was delivered and she proved to be a wise investment, of course she was free. She killed anything and everything that moved or thought about moving. She scared the hell out of the dog and established her reign over him in the first few hours of her arrival.

She was good at what she does best. She is a killer. Occasionally we would get a bat and she would climb onto the book case or the top of the door and throw herself in the air as it circled. She’d get the little fucker ever time. The cat was allowed to stay.

We moved a year ago and there is no mouse problem here. That doesn’t stop the cat however. If she needs mice or moles she finds them in the outside world and brings them back in the house. Or at least she tries to.

The cat is an outdoor cat in the spring, summer and fall. It isn’t until it gets to the freezing mark where she no longer wants to go out all night. My cat is like my ex, she comes in, she eats and she leaves, maybe, if she feels like it, she will stick around long enough to get a few tummy rubs. I did not want an outdoor cat but she had other ideas.

Which brings me to last night. It was warm yesterday, 40ish, and then the temperature dropped to below zero. The cat knew it was cold but she had been stuck in the house for days and needed to get out. She sleeps all day and night and when she isn’t she is feeding so I can imagine she feels a desire to move a bit. At 2am this morning, -10 degrees with a windchill of at least -20 she decided it was time to go out. She starts by meowing by the door until someone lets her out. When that doesn’t work she comes into my room and meows, loudly. Often she is just hungry but I make sure her bowl is filled before I go to bed for this reason. The problem is she doesn’t believe me and wants me to go downstairs and check out her food bowl with her. If I don’t get up she will continue to meow, loudly.

I go downstairs with her, muttering obscenities about her the whole way and telling her that she has food and doesn’t need me to go with her, trust me you silly cat there is food. We get down stairs and there is indeed food. Of course food isn’t what she wants. She runs through my son’s bedroom and climbs up to his window and meows more. My son is dead to the world. He is covered but so many blankets that I’m not even sure he is there. He could have snuck out of the house and I wouldn’t have known it. So I figure I will do what any good mother would do and I shut the cat in my son’s room and go back to bed. He sleeps soundly, if he is really there, so he won’t notice the cat meowing, loudly, to get out.

My bedroom it turns out is located directly above my son’s room and even if he can’t hear the cat I still can. I put a pillow over my head and try to go back to sleep. The meowing only gets louder and when I peer out from under my pillow I see the cat is sitting on my bedside table and is about to knock over my water glass to get my attention. Obviously my son is home.

Fuck! Stupid cat. I get up, grab the damn cat and throw her outside. Take that you evil being! I know I won’t get to sleep anytime soon. I know this because even though we have been playing this game for 45 minutes she is outside and will want to come in in about 5 minutes. I wait by the door.

She appears at the door, meows, loudly, and I let her back in. She looks at me like I am a horrible human for letting her go out in that bitter cold.

She has been curled up on the couch in my office ever since. Every time I walk by her I throw wadded up pieces of paper at her nose. She wakes long enough to give me the evil eye and goes right back to sleep.

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