Cats, Cat Memes, and Crazy Cat Ladies.

It's important to do your daily cat calisthenics.   

My neighbor is trending towards crazy. She has like 17 cats. She's not a cat lady...yet...she's not lonely; she still has her dead-head, live-in, pot-head boyfriend (who works about 8 hours a week)...but she is dangerously nearing that social stigma known as the neighborhood weirdo.

Some mornings, when I'm leaving for work, I'll hear my neighbor desperately call for one of her too independent cats: "Pooches, pooches, POOCHES!"  Of course, Pooches doesn't come. Cats respond on their own time. Pooches: "Yeah, yeah, yeah, lady, can't you see I'm skulking in this here long grass! I'm skulking, and pausing to lick my paw. Feed one of those other G-damn ferrel cats you love so much!"  

The Journey of Catty Gann.  

Maybe it's sadistic, but I sometimes wish that Pooches would die. Or I sometimes dream Pooches could freight hop a train going to Seattle, so she could live it up on Pike's Street seafood. Either the life of a hobo cat or death would be a better life than living with 16 other crazy ass cats.

The cat mafia is a dangerous lifestyle.

How do I know they are crazy? Because they climb the fence in my backyard every night and meet up right behind my patio door to either have crazy cat orgies, or to recreate the feline dramatization of Westside Story. Odd thing is, the noises of cats in their death throes, after being beat profusely by tiny cat-bike chains, or cats in the throes of passionate lovemaking, are nearly identical.  Both sound like a middle school child trying to play a miniature high-pitched didgeridoo.

The first few times I heard this sound, I thought my wife had bought a new relaxing music CD titled: Aboriginal Songs Butchered by Paul Hogan.  I could forgive Mr. Dundee for that sound, but not cats. It's not that I don't like cats. Cats in small numbers are fine. Multiple cats trespassing in your front or backyard at all times; and waiting until 3 am to consummate their love, or have an Anchorman style gang fight will drive anyone nuts.

In a moment of weakness one night, I shot an especially yowl-ish old cat.

Oh, don't get all high and mighty and PETA on me.  I pumped my BB gun one time, and aimed for the rump of a über fluffy white cat and pulled the trigger.  It yelped, turned around, and when it couldn't find the source of its love tap, merely moved six inches and continued its caterwauling.

In my defense, the cat I took a shot at was nowhere near
this cute.  The NRA should take this guy's gun away.  

It's not often I wish I owned a surface to air missile launcher, but that night was one night I would've called a nuclear strike on my own yard just to teach that fluffy feline bastard a lesson.

Needless to say, because of these cats, my neighbor and I aren't on very good terms. Actually, my neighbor has never said one word to me. Not one. In ten years. I've said hi, I've tried starters, she just runs inside her house like I'm an Animal Regulation worker trying to kidnap the last morsels of her sanity.  I have, however, talked to her septuagenarian boyfriend, which is as intellectually stimulating as talking to a hippy Patrick Starfish. I think the man has eaten one too many mushrooms--the poisonous kind.

Ironically Coincidentally, my brother and his wife also lived next door to a cat-woman back in 2007. Their situation was so bad, that the stink of the cat lady's house caused my brother's family to put their home up for sale. Before their home went into escrow, their neighbor was arrested for animal abuse.  Within one years time, animal regulators removed over 70 cats from that home.  It was so full of excrement that it had to be condemned. I told my brother he should leave a Hallmark card for the new owners:  Welcome to the neighborhood new homeowners; hopefully you like emaciated cats trying to claw their way into your home!

How does one get to this stage in life? I'm not going to even wonder about mental illness or loneliness or rescue-complexes, because that would probably require an advanced degree in psychology. Yet I have a degree in BSology and I think it's cat fanaticism, or the worship of cat deities. Signs of unhealthy cat zealotry include: daydreaming about ligers; excessively drawing Garfield, Heathcliff, Felix or Hello Kitty on notebooks; collecting porcelain cats; letting cats lick your face; eating cat food and bragging about it; and making/posting/laughing uncontrollably at cat memes.

The millennial generation loves cat memes. They wear cat sweaters and love ligers. I fear for them. I fear we will have an unhealthy amount of cat ladies and cat hermits living in feral colonies, studying Felinology. And while they stupidly and illogically fear the Zombie Apocalypse, they should fear a very possible scenario: a cat-tastrophe.