Herding cats

Something I’ve not written about previously, but that most of you know about, is the ongoing Retaining Wall Miller Cat Saga. Doug and Marilyn Miller have been keepers of their daughter’s kitty for quite some time, as Krisha can’t have pets where she lives. All spring and summer we watched Doug chase the cat through neighbors’ back yards, trying to lure her out from behind bushes and from under our sunroom. On at least a half-dozen occasions, a smiling Doug would pop up outside the sunroom window, holding a cigarette in one hand, and waving with the other as he calmly waited for kitty to leave her hiding place so he could herd her back home. This was not an easy task, even for a cat wrangler like Doug.

We haven’t seen much of either Doug or the kitty recently, but a few weeks ago there was a lot of mewing going on under the sunroom. Even with the lattice trim skirting the space between the sunroom and the ground, a clever cat -- Krisha’s or another--had squeezed through an opening and was serenading us in the evenings. One afternoon while the cat was out mousing, Dad/Paco, determined not to become the step-father of a litter of illegitimate baby kittens, closed up the gaps that might allow the cat to continue using the space under the sunroom as a motel.

Dad’s ploy worked. No more cat. No more whiny meows from under the sunroom. This could be the end of the story, but it’s not. Yesterday, our neighbor Mary (of Mary and Darrel, and my other brother Darrel) came over to ask me if I’d noticed a police car parked outside of their house several times in the past week. I’d seen it once, but since Darrel was in his yard raking and talking to the officer, I doubted that a domestic disturbance, a murder, or a burglary had taken place. What HAD taken place was a birth. Actually, multiple kitten births, under Mary and Darrel’s deck. The past few days, the mother cat and kittens took turns sunning themselves on the deck, prompting Mary and Darrel to call whatever version of Animal Control we have in St. Peter -- in this case, a cop with a cat cage. The officer has appeared three or four times to exchange empty cat cages for full ones, and now Mary and Darrel are down to one or two kitties to capture so the feline family can be reunited. The cat is likely a stray, since it wasn't wearing a cat collar. I might not have thought of summoning help to capture and care for the mother cat and her babies, but now I’ll know what to do if RW Miller’s cat shows up again.