The Chronicles of Catsbane

if you're a cat lover, flee now. because this is the beginning of a cat-hating rant/series.

since last winter when i was home, MUCH has changed, bu the only thing that actually bothers me is the amount of cats that decide to hang out on our property. I HATE THEM. I HATE ALL OF THEM.
i have ZERO sympathy for these pathetic wastes of oxygen and i will do anything and everything it takes to get them off my land.

I might know how the Native Americans felt.
which makes me Crazy horse, and "Lucifer" (the biggest, baddest cat of the neighborhood who bares an uncanny resemblance to the aptly named feline on Walt Disney's Cinderella) is Andrew Jackson.

bring it on, lucy.

when i was home over the summer, i was disgusted by the cats but too depressed to do anything about it. ho ho ho, that has changed, i promise you.
I HATE THE CATS.

there are more and more every day, and i'm only being slightly hyperbolic.

Sunday afternoon when i came home from church, there was one on my driveway (good old fat Lucifer) who refused to move, even when i drove up to a foot in front of him. I got out of the car and gave him my best impression of an angry Susan Boyle, so he bolted, and took with him a brown calico from behind the almond trees. I kept after them for a few steps, so i went around to the back of the house, where a gangly grey furball was curled up on the bottom of our slide. my eyes about popped out of my head, and i jumped toward it, so the cat jumped out of the slide and over the fence. I walked onto the porch, looking out past the little brown fence to see 2 MORE cats beyond it! one by our citrus trees and one just outside our wire fence, sitting smugly out of reach. i ran toward them, and they both retreated to behind our neighbors infamous cinderblock wall. (which has been a cat safehaven for years, ugh.) shaking my head i walked to the back door, but it was locked. so i sighed in exasperation and walked around the OTHER side of the house by the walnut tree to the front yard, and as i turned the corner, ANOTHER 2 CATS bolted out from under the bush by my bedroom window into the lot to the left of me. i screamed "LEAVE!!" at one when it paused and glanced back. i marched up to the front door, yanked it open, stomped inside and slammed it shut.
7 CATS?! REALLY?!


each day this week i have chased cats from the yard hollering like a banshee and waving something over my head, usually our porch broom, a broken hockey stick, or a shovel. they run away into the fields and i spit like a cowboy.
i also found out that the area surrounding our citrus trees by 10 feet in each direction is their litter box.
I HATE THEM.


tonight, after we'd just finished Davy Crockett (how fitting to my cause) i heard the oh-so-familiar screech of cats getting at it.
THE WORST SOUND IN THE WORLD, MIND YOU. LITERALLY THE WORST.
it sounds like a cross between a screaming child and a devil-possessed child being played back on a very old cassette tape that's gone wonky.
i tore open the front door and ran out to the bushes where they usually lay in their filth, but found nothing, i heard scurrying and flipped around, just in time to see 3 of satan's animals SKIMMYING DOWN OUR MAPLE FROM THE ROOF. THEY WERE ON OUR ROOF. THAT IS MY TURF.
YOU HAVE GONE TO FAR, CATS. TOO FAR.

UGH.

for years, Derek's trusty bbgun, which he proudly dubbed "Catsbane" (and by dubbed i mean etched into the barrel with a Swiss army knife) kept our yard clean of riff-raff of the feline kind. but in the last year or so, someone put it away in the wrong spot and we couldn't find it. well I found it last week, but the loading mechanism is jammed or something. IT DOESNT WORK.

The days of our beloved Catsbane are over.

(and for the record, we never actually killed the cats. just shot near them to scare them off, and it worked.)

screaming and waving a stick doesn't really cut it.
so, now i'm going to chronicle my attempts to clear my land of the devil's species.

and a fair warning to my neighbors:
I HAVE WARNED YOU BEFORE! I'll not do it again! SPAY AND NEUTER, my friends. spay and neuter. please. secondly? I HATE YOUR CATS. KEEP THEM AWAY FROM ME OR I WILL NOT HESITATE TO TAKE MURDEROUS ACTIONS. (on your cats of course. I'd never kill a human being over a cat. I like my neighbors.)
i'm not kidding, i'll do anything to get these nasty things off my property.

I'll try a bunch of nice methods first. 'natural' ones i find on the internet. but if they don't work, and you all ignore the flyers i'll be distributing tomorrow morning about keeping your pets in your own stinking yards, i will put out radiator fluid. or rat poison. or both. i will do it. i am not afraid.

FOR CATSBANE!!