sean 1, pussy 0

i have had a nemesis for the last few years…

yep – the city came out MULTIPLE times and set traps. i even fucked with their traps a bit to make them snap quicker and easier (you’re welcome, city of lockhart!) AND still nada. well, at least nada on the perpetrator i knew we needed to get. we got other cats, a scary nyc sewer sized rat (who i saw when it was making enough noise to spook budnik in the cage outside, but got out before morning – the trap was big enough to hold a house cat so it had enough give for a rat to escape) and even a possum…but never this little elusive fucker. we would have traps out monday through friday, see this little twat on our property, even see evidence of it climbing on my car, but it never took the bait in the trap. it would get worse on the weekend (almost like it knew) because the city won’t leave their traps on the weekend since they don’t have a regular patrolling officer to check them…

…so i went on groupon and bought my own fucking trap.

in typical me fashion the trap came in on a weekend when i was working a lot, so the box got set aside, and promptly forgotten about for a month or four. i pulled it out and set it off because the other night gypsy girl got me up at 5:45am to go outside and something spooked the FUCK out of her in the dark brush pile out back. the ufc thinks there might be a snake back there, but i figured on the cat, so i set the trap the next night out back near the brush pile, baiting it with a paper bowl with peanut butter and dog food mixed (i guess in my intoxicated state i figured whatever critter it was, it was high?). the next morning the trap HAD been tripped, in the sense that it WAS snapped shut, but nothing in it.

so i moved it out front friday morning and baited it with cat food. came home friday night and nothing. saturday morning? nothing. saturday night? nothing. but sunday morning? well, you see the pic above…

…but here was the problem. i usually leave my house by 8:30 or 8:45…the pic above was snapped at 9:13. no way i could leave any later and get to work on time…and animal control, as i mentioned, typically doesn’t run around on sundays out here. but they agreed to come get the cat as i said i was NOT letting it out of the trap and if they didn’t come out it would roast. so they came out and took the cat…

…and my trap.

i’m not sure if the cat went to the shelter or they just took it home – i wasn’t home to witness anything and reports between the boy and the wife vary greatly. but i DO know that either way she (my neighbor) KNOWS the cat got trapped on my property. today they returned my trap. it already out in relatively the same area with fresh stinky fish-based cat food as bait, and i’ll leave it out for a few days and see what i get. if i get this little fucker again, NEXT time it won’t go to the lockhart shelter…it’ll go at least thirty miles away to a shelter.

and if it’s back again? well, it’ll be road trip time. not the longest i’ve ever driven for pussy, but definitely the longest with a guarantee of no happy ending. at least not in THAT sense.