Before I got married six years ago, I lived with my parents. We had three cats who lived outdoors, sleeping mostly in the horse barn on our property, or, in very cold weather, in our basement. The cats were never allowed in the house because I am deathly allergic to them. But I loved those cats, and they kept the rodents away. We had them neutered, and later, a third cat was added to our family—a small orange-black-and-white calico—and we had her spayed. They were lovely critters, friendly, came running when we called their names, left the occasional mouse on our patio stoop. The gunslinger of the group, Monty, was a wirey fellow, ruthless and sleek, and a glutton for a warm lap. He drooled when we pet him. Tigger was the lazy one, with a broken meow, and like his brother, enjoyed friendly company and human loving. Kitty—so-named because we couldn’t find a name for her—was a little more standoffish, but nuzzled and drooled when you pet her, too.
There were other cats in the neighborhood who made use of our barn during the winter months, or mooched the cat food we left for our own. In the summer, the neighborhood cats fought. Once in a while, Monty or Tigger would come home with a minor war wound. Kitty once came home with a tear in her ear, which scarred over. The sounds of fighting or mating cats periodically punctuated our summer nights, that mournful wail and eerie yowling drifting through the warm humid air of our rural subdivision. It was enough to make you reach for the covers for protection, even when it was too hot to bear just a sheet, sending goosebumps down your flesh.
When we first moved to our little German dorf in January, we were greeted by two tabby-cat brothers, not yet a year old. I found them huddled together outside our patio door, patiently waiting for attention. Remembering those two orange tabbies of my own back home, I was delighted. I showed them to my son, who was also delighted. We started feeding them. I bought cat food, and we gave them our meaty leftovers. Though we never allowed them indoors, those cats became the highlight of our day.
One morning, following my usual morning ritual, I had opened the patio door to our bedroom and the window in my son’s room to air the lower level out. You must understand that windows do not have screens, here in Germany. I left my own bedroom to open the window of another room, and returned to make the beds. When that was done, I closed the windows and went upstairs. I didn’t notice anything unusual at the time.
When I came back down an hour later, I smelled the unmistakable odor of cat musk, and it was very strong. “Uh oh,” I thought. When I entered my bedroom, the stench was overpowering. There was no cat inside, but one had snuck in during the thirty seconds I had left the room unoccupied with the patio door open earlier that morning, and marked my bedroom as its territory. I traced the odor to the corner of the wall right by the door, and nearly gagged when I smelled it: the singular odor of armpits and rotten meat. It was horrible.
I decided on the spot that I don’t like cats, anymore. And certainly not ones that haven’t been neutered. And I especially didn’t like the daddy tom I had seen lurking around our house right around the time I had aired out our bedrooms. When I returned upstairs, I threw out the cat food. “No more feeding the cats,” I exclaimed to my family. “They are not allowed here, anymore!”
FYI, It took a lot of diligence, but I finally got rid of the smell by using Febreeze and household-strength vinegar.
After we stopped feeding the litter-mates, they and the rest of their misbegotten family have stopped lurking around our patio. We see them scurry across, going from one place to the other, but they don’t linger anymore. At least not around our patios.
Until last week.
I saw the mommy cat licking herself contentedly on the bench that is connected to our big stone grill. Nearby lurked one of the two brothers who had benefited from our generosity a few months before, and whose daddy had made it necessary to mark my territory as his own. The cat is full grown now, and he was stalking the mommy cat. She glanced over her shoulder at him and twitched her black and white tail at him, smiled seductively and beckoned him into the bushes she had claimed as her boudoir. Understanding what was going on, I rushed outside to chase them away. “No kitty-making in MY backyard!” I shouted at them. The last thing I wanted was a litter of stray kittens populating the underbrush of our bushes.
But that wasn’t the end of it. Oh no. One by one, other male cats streaked across our patio in search of the female in heat—seemingly the only female cat in the neighborhood. I saw cats I didn’t recognize. The sound of feline sex growls sounded from all around, first in one neighbor’s yard, then another’s. One night was particularly active, waking my husband from a deep slumber. “What was that,” he asked me, wide-eyed and clearly freaked out. He’s a city boy, having lived his entire life in Stuttgart. “Cats,” I said, the country girl, having nearly forgotten the racket those felines can make and how creepy they sound in the dead of night.
It became a quite a nuisance. No one around here is keen on those strays—especially under the threat of more invading our lovely hillside of the Schwarzwald. One neighbor couple had taken to dumping water on the copulating animals to chase them away. More than once I heard gun fire ringing through the air, and even witnessed another neighbor with his air rifle scouting around for the cat I had just seen prowling through his garden.
Mis Kitty's season is over. All is quiet again. Our night’s slumber isn’t interrupted anymore by the sound of cats howling on the hill immediately outside our bedroom. I am even less of a cat-lover than I was only two weeks ago. I understand now, why people once stuffed kittens into a sack and tossed them in the river to drown. If only I had a magic wand to wave them all away—or at the least, to spay and neuter them. I wouldn’t mind their company for the next twenty or so years—as long as they didn’t behave like cats.
