My 'lil clubber (and maybe slugger)

Hallelujah!!! Y'all, we went out in our front yard yesterday....to play!! Can you believe it?? Hmm...I'd like to be a fly on the wall to see some of your faces right now. So let me explain.

I have a really frightening (always drunk) neighbor who's wife LOOOVES cats. She would put flower pots of cat food out and feed all of the strays. Now you're probably thinking somewhere around 5 cats. Nope...try anywhere from 20-30 depending on what season it was and how much breeding was going on. I don't know how many of you have seen the strange 80's horror film about some family of human like aliens moved into a house and were surrounded by dozens and dozens of cats, but that's what their house looked like all the time. As a result, we had anywhere from 3-10 cats just hanging out in our yard. Some days, they were all just sprawled out on the driveway and grass, some days they just sat and flicked their tail from one side to the other, some days they just paced the yard and tortured our poor dog, and other days they were...well, making babies. So our yard???? Poop filled...pee filled...dead bird filled, need I say more?? Our cars? Scratched up from claw marks, stinky from pee getting into the air vents from the outside, and our windows covered in paw prints. Totally and completely nasty and really stinky. Plus, Darin's highly allergic to them.

So we've called the Humane Society I don't know how many times. They're unwilling to help. I've called the animal catcher, and b/c there's no leash law for cats in our town, there's nothing he can do. The animal catcher told me to just throw raw meat coated in freon out there to kill them off. As much as I hate them I could never do that in a million years. It's not their fault that they don't have homes and are born into strayhood. Know what it does to them? It stops up their bladder so they can't pass urine and eventually their bladder just explodes and if that alone doesn't kill them the poison seeping into their body does. Neighbors H.A.T.E them and have complained for years and years sometimes even to the police. I tried to call the health department to talk to them about it one time. Jedi (our dog) had gotten out and went straight over to the cat infested yard. We went over to get him and I was just blindsided and nauseous at the smell and sights over there. It's got to be a health hazard for the people living there. But nothing ever came of any of it. No one wanted to go talk to the neighbor directly b/c he's quite the mean and erratic drunk. So at a last attempt to do something, last year we spent about $100 on these two Cat Stops. They're contraptions that sit in the ground and put off this apparently horrid sound when cats come within 20 feet of it. Humans can't hear it and dogs aren't bothered by it. Apparently neither were these cats. It cut down on some of the traffic, but they'd quickly figure out where these two things were and carefully walk around it so as not to set it off. There's a waste of $100.

So I've noticed that they've slowly began disappearing over the course of the last couple of months. The couple split up and she moved out. I just assumed that b/c she was gone they weren't being fed anymore. But that wasn't the case at all. They were just...well, disappearing...with a little help. Darin was talking to our other neighbor last weekend and they got on the cat subject, both expressing their dislikes of the dozens of critters. He mentioned to Darin, "I'm slowly taking care of that problem." Hmm..that would explain the mysterious disappearance of them. Apparently both mentioned that kids couldn't be taken outdoors b/c of all the cat poo. That's been my biggest problem with it is the fact that our kids would never be able to go outside. So I'm not sure exactly what he's doing. He may be trapping them and taking them somewhere. Or he might be killing them off...which I have a hard time believing that b/c I've seen no dead cats. Either way, they're disappearing for good. We see maybe one a week on our property.

So now back to the beginning. We actually went out front yesterday...to play!!! And we didn't come inside with cat poo all over our shoes! How exciting is that???!!!!

Here are some pictures of our lil' clubber (what other name do you use for a golfer?) and slugger. Besides the fact that both the bat and golf club are almost as tall as she is, she enjoyed them.

So we..and by we, I mean she..did lots of this. Constantly just ran back and forth across the yard.



Lots of this. Can't you just hear her thinking, "How am I supposed to hold this thing again?"




And a little of this...



I on the other hand? Well, I just sat and watched her play. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is something I never thought I'd get the pleasure of ever doing while we lived in this house.