No more cats, no more cats....

..... no more cats. Period. End of story.

At any given time since our 1993 arrival in Texas, we have had no less than two and no more than four cats, at the same time, in one house.  Except for one tiny female kitten who lived just a week, all of the others were males. And therein lies the problem.

Male cats. They specialize in establishing their territory and marking the boundaries of their kingdom. All our cats have been neutered, so you would think that wouldn't be a problem. Ha. Think again.  A few years ago, we put my blue-eyed AngelBoy 'to sleep' because he just wouldn't, would not, absolutely refused, to quit finding new corners of this house to use as his private litter-free litter box. AngelBoy's problem wasn't a new problem because of this house, it was his ten-year-long quest to drive me completely insane and give our Clear Lake carpet-cleaning guy a good vacation every year with all the extra calls he made to that house.  The Clear Lake house had a screen porch, which prolonged AngelBoy's life considerably...... no screen porch in this house.  And I couldn't make him an outside cat because he had been de-clawed.

To this day, I can see AngelBoy's blue eyes, and if I close my own eyes and think of that beautiful cat, I can feel the long and silky fur that covered him from nose to tail.  It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do with a cat...... bring him to the vet and have him 'put down' because there was no way to keep him from thinking outside of his litter box, and believe me when I tell you we tried everything, even going so far as to consulting a well-known Houston pet psychic.

A couple of weeks ago, Mickey Kitty, our youngest cat, started picking up where AngelBoy left off. From time to time since we've been in this house, Mickey had left his mark here and there, which prompted me to keep mostly all of the house off-limits to the cats.  Their domain is the large TV room and the connecting bathroom, on the first floor.  At some point during every day, I would close the doors leading to the front of the house and to the upstairs, and Mickey and Sweet Pea could walk around the kitchen and the breakfast room as well.... but couldn't get further into the living room and dining room, and certainly not up the stairs to the other floors.  Mickey wasn't always happy with that arrangement, and if he saw me going up the back stairs and closing the door behind me, he would meow his little kitty-heart out until I came back down the stairs.  If I took too long getting into his sight again, he would 'leave his mark' on the door to that staircase. As I said... shades of AngelBoy, minus the blue eyes.

Mickey is an all-black cat, very small, very non-smart outside on the property, and we've had him since he was a few weeks old and just a couple of pounds worth of fur.  My husband found him when he was out walking Gracie in the park of our old neighborhood one day...... he came home with this tiny black kitten, just a few weeks after we had each promised one another that we would not, would not, would not get any more cats.  Over the years, Mickey was our third all-black cat, so I guess we had a soft spot for black cats that no one else wanted.

So now we've had to deal with AngelBoy-behavior in Mickey Kitty. Last year, we let Mickey outside, thinking he would stay around the house like our very smart outside cat Gatsby. Think again. Mickey was all over the road, walking into and through the large drainage pipes that took him from our property to the neighbor's. Mickey started out near our pond and ended up in the neighbor's field with his cows and goats.  Enough of that..... into the house for good came Mickey. Out came the cleaning supplies...... being that our old carpet cleaning guy is still in Clear Lake because (silly me) we didn't invite him to move up here to the Hill Country when we did.  After daily scrubbings and countless loads of laundry, I said enough was enough.  But what to do with Mickey?  Another cat on my conscience after a last trip to the vet?

We had the empty chicken coop...... we had been bringing both Sweet Pea and Mickey into that coop-turned-cat-cabana for months now, and they both loved being in there. Provided it was warm, not too cold, not too windy, not too hot, and definitely not raining.  So why couldn't we turn the coop into Mickey's new home-away-from-home?  And that's what I did........ all of Mickey's favorite things went in there..... and so did Mickey.  My husband thought it wouldn't be a problem to leave Mickey in there all day and all night...... it was better than a trip to the vet, he said.

Ha. Think again.  Mickey's first all-nighter in the coop this past weekend was a dark and stormy night, complete with pouring rain, thunder, lightning. The only bright spot of the night was the warm temperature. The storm started after midnight and woke me up.  No way was I going out there in the middle of the storm.  I don't walk around this property at night in the first place...... coyotes, huge raccoons, armadillos digging holes that can twist your ankle, possums that bare their teeth at you, snakes looking for mice and chicken eggs.....  I don't even sit on the porch and look at the stars at night, so I'm not going to go walking from the house to the coop in the middle of a storm.

I woke up about five or six times during that stormy night, hearing the wind and the rain, and also hearing Mickey's decibel-blasting meows of terror coming from the coop. My heart was breaking for that cat. When my husband woke up during the storm, he told me not to worry, that Mickey was dry, but scared, and he'd live through it.

Up and awake and dressed before dawn, I was out of the back door as soon as it got light the next morning.  The rain had soaked everything along the two fenced-in walls of the coop..... the other two walls of wood protected everything along those sides...... and Mickey, poor Mickey, was wide-eyed and indignant and insulted. I picked him up and carried him into the house. I apologized to him with each and every step and I just cried.

I washed all of the wet blankets and cat pillows in the coop..... re-arranged the cat furniture in there to keep everything away from the fenced sides..... all of that while Mickey was sequestered in the bathroom because I didn't trust him in the TV room anymore.  I had already washed and scrubbed and cleaned every bit of that TV room and I didn't want to have to re-do anything.

What to do with Mickey? What to do......  The coop seemed to be the logical place to keep him, especially as the weather gets warmer..... but still, he needed a safe place to go in case of rain or thunder or anything that goes bump in the night and scares him.  That coop used to be a dog kennel for the previous owners....... it's very big, with a high ceiling and a secure gate...... my husband added layers of meshed wire and chicken-wire before we got our first group of chickens.  After I got tired of having chickens stolen by hawks and foxes and heaven-only-knows-what-else, my husband power-washed the coop and we turned it into a screen porch for the cats.  However... in one corner of the coop is a little Alice-in-Wonderland-sized doorway that leads to a fenced-in corner of the garage.  The previous owner cut that doorway so his dog could go from the kennel to the garage when it got too cold or too wet in the coop.  We had sealed that doorway with mesh wire when we got the chickens, to keep them from getting into the garage.

My husband pulled away that wire today...... and into that fenced in corner of the garage, he put our dog Gracie's old puppy-crate.  Gracie was a border collie/black lab mix, so her crate was a good sized one....... more than big enough to hold a warm blanket and pillow-bed for Mickey Kitty, and still give Mickey some walking-around room.  My husband opened up the door of the crate and put that open door right up to the doorway going from the coop to the garage. Presto!  Mickey now had a little doorway to go through to take him out of the coop and into a warm and safe corner inside the garage..... right to his favorite blanket and his favorite pillow-bed.  He can get out of the cold and the wind coming through the coop but he can't hurt himself on anything in the garage because he's surrounded by that dog crate.

And where is Mickey right now as I type?  In his little bed inside that comfy crate in the garage?  Of course not. He's in the bathroom connected to the TV room..... in another little comfy cat bed in there because the temperature is going down to the mid-30s tonight and I don't want my misbehaving little cat to be cold, either out in the coop or in that corner of the garage.

It's been a rough few days.  For Mickey and for us.  Which is why I am saying, promising, vowing.... no more cats, no more cats, no more cats. Period. End of story.