The Cat Whisperer Versus the Dread Pirate Misty

Those of you who know me over on ravelry have probably already seen stories about my Dad and his dealings with the colony of feral cats that made an appearance on his land. There have been no new litters for about two years so I think it's safe to assume that everyone has been trapped and fixed at this point. This still leaves a ton of feral cats that live in and around my parent's house and in the woods behind their house.

In the past the ferals have managed to take up residence in the small space between the ceiling and the roof so they literally had a couple of ceiling cats. It was kind of awesome to just be sitting there knitting and watching TV with them and all of the sudden the little thud of feral foot would sound overhead. The best was when they would fight. My Dad finally coaxed all the cats out with lots of tuna fish and closed their entrance.

Then there was the time that my sister had two semi-feral kittens that she had trapped and was trying to tame as indoor cats. They took up residence under her bed and eventually burrowed into her box springs for a better hiding place. When it came time to get them fixed she had the unlucky task of trying to figure out how to extract them. So she called the cat whisperer. He looked under her bed and found the wad of cats, took out a pocket knife and cut a cat wad shaped hole in her box springs and caught the very surprised kittens as they fell out of the mattress and shoved them in a cage. My sister said that she had never seen two more surprised cats in her life.

Having said all of this, my Dad has been thwarted by a rather stupid feral cat named The Dread Pirate Misty (thank you to my little sister for the name), aka Dreadly. Dreadly is a tortie and can usually be found sitting on their roof and meowing and begging for pets when she remembers that she likes humans. When you're a Dreadly cat, your memory isn't that good. Anyway little Sis's new German Shepardish puppy managed to gnaw a hole in the bottom of the door into my Dad's office. My Mom blocked it off, but Dreadly had already discovered the wonder that is "the Cat Whisperer's Office". First she figured out how to move the chest blocking the hole and then when Dad fixed that she discovered that she could remove the insulation around the window a/c unit and break in. Now she's back to tunnelling in through the door. My Dad keeps blocking her different entrance places, but she's always at least a step ahead of him. We're not sure what she's getting out of this whole breaking and entering thing since she only breaks in when Dad isn't in there and when Dad isn't in there the a/c is turned off to that room. Still every day or so Dreadly will perform her Houdini act. They are having to keep a close eye on her because well a) she's a feral cat and therefore not house broken, b) there's no food, water or litter box in there and c) it's been in the upper 90s and low 100s for the past few weeks which means that it's even warmer in the room.

As of this morning the score stands at:

The Dread Pirate Misty 7

My Dad, the Cat Whisperer 0

BTW - here's a picture of their little B & E artist taken during the great Louisiana snow storm last winter.