The staff goes on strike

Most cat owners have heard the phrase

“Dogs have….. Cats have staff.” 

Yeah. Well, our cat has a certain staff woman very well trained, but with the help of her union rep, she is now on strike.

Our cat is an “indoor-outdoor” cat, and we have allowed her to drive us nuts. When she wants in, she crosses the bridge from the porch to the bird-feeding platform in front of the window where I sit at my computer and meows at me to let her in.

And what do I do?

I get up and let her in.

She eats a bite of food, uses the cat box (it seems not to matter that she has 8 acres of land on which she could poop or pee), perhaps plays with one of her toys for a minute or two, and then, within about 10 minutes or so, she wants out again. If the back door is not ajar, she nags at us to let her out by meowing obnoxiously. And we get up and let her out. 

We cannot just leave food out for her and make her a totally outside cat because there are several big tom cats who have decided our property is part of their territory. They torment her enough as it is, and if we left food out, they would simply eat it and the problem would get even worse. Plus she has no sense (one morning very early, I watched her following a fox that was trotting down the driveway).

In the winter, it is not quite as bad because it is COLD outside and she is happier to stay indoors, but as Spring arrives, the problem escalates.

Having already established here in earlier installments that parts of our house are rather crooked, I don’t need to go into a detailed explanation of why the screen door at the other end of the house requires forceful persuasion to shut all the way, and even then, there is a half-inch gap at the top. If left to its own devices, it stays open about an inch. On more than one occasion, I have gotten up to let the cat in the door at my end of house (which does shut all the way) and she has run straight through the house and out the back door at the other end.

After listening to me complain for the umpteenth time about the cat, today Richard finally said.

Look, the back door is open. Just ignore her. She will go around and come in on her own.

So earlier today, I took his advice. She crossed the from the porch to the platform and meowed at me. I got up to make sure the back door was open. She thought I was getting up to let her in, but I did not. I sat back down. She returned to the platform and meowed at me again. I ignored her. She left and came in the back door herself, curled up on the bed, and went to sleep.

Yea!!!

And yes, other visitors have occasionally come in the back door as well: lizards, frogs, chipmunks, wrens….