Weekend Intelligence: Squirrel

I had started a blog for the long Memorial Day Weekend, but work and general lack of anything substantive over that weekend made it difficult to talk about. I spent most of it cleaning the house and getting some long overdue maintenance done while the rest of the family was in El Paso. The house looked immaculate for a whopping 48 hours after they got home. -.-; Such is life. This weekend was much more interesting anyway. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights!

Let me take a step back by a few weeks. Early in the morning in early May, during one hell of a rainstorm, a hired hand van visited the home on the corner in our neighborhood. In a few short hours, the cars were towed, all possessions that could be liquidated or had outstanding loans were confiscated and all the rest was tossed out into the front yard. I remember seeing those two children that lived in that house, for the last time, that morning. They looked more than a little in shock; their tired, blank expressions barely masking a fathomless sea of questions; no doubt they were bewildered at what they had experienced that morning and at their parents inability to do anything about it.

The family never did come back for the few things they could have salvaged from the rain. Some of the things had not been on the ground for half a day before some of the neighbors began to pick through it, finding in the rubble some trinket, appliance or tool. Something of value. The pile was pretty thoroughly trash by the time Waste Management came by 3 days later to pick up the remains and toss it in a truck. The only thing left behind at the end of it all was a ruined front lawn, an eerily vacant house, and a small, sleek white house cat with a big bushy black tail.

She sat there for several days after the trash had been removed, patiently waiting for them to come home. After about a week, she started to get hungry and finally, leaving her corner on the patio, began to hunt insects around the neighborhood. It was not long before she caught the vicious eye of some of the children in the neighborhood, who began to terrorize her with shouting, throwing sticks and chunks of brick and rock at her. I even witnessed grown adults in the neighborhood attempt shoo her away with water shot from pressure nozzles.

She didn't act like the ferals in the neighborhood: those nasty, screeching, demonic animals that ambush people as they walk in the evening. No, many times she didn't even really run, just took cover in some bushes until the people got bored and moved along. It was one such day that I was out grilling some burgers, and I saw this pathetic excuse for a kitten in the rock bed next door, eyeing me and what I had on the plate. Her coat had become scraggly and she had lost considerable weight, but the one feature that she still had was that tail of hers.

It's true what they say: don't feed a stray cat unless you want a new cat, but I just couldn't help myself. I cut a small piece of hamburger off and called out to her, "Hey, Squirrel Kitteh! You can has cheezburger?" She shyly made her way over to me, and once she came as close as she cared to, stood up on her hind legs (again, reminding me of a squirrel) and in one swift move, snagged the bit of meat from my hands with her forepaws, crammed it into her mouth and disappeared into the bushes.

It wasn't long before we saw her again. She decided to take up semi-permanent residence in the next-door neighbors bushes during the day to escape the sun. I set a bowl of water out for her in the shade during the day, and at night, she'd hunt the junebugs that bothered us while we sat out and smoked. That worked for a little while, but it became clear that she remembered what it was like to live inside, and wanted to return to that life. So after a little saving up, this past weekend, we trapped her in the garage so we could take her to the vet and get her caught up on all her shots and tests.

I'll tell you, I spent a good couple hours trying to get her into that cat carrier, and still didn't succeed. She did NOT want to go into the box. I asked D for some help. She agreed, and after 2 minutes, single-handedly lured, caught and placed the cat in the carrier. When we arrived at the vet, the receptionist asked us to fill out some initial paperwork. After I had filled it out and gave it back to her, she took one look at the cat and laughed. "Squirrel..." she said with a smile, "Yeah, that about says it, don't it?"

Today, that house still sits vacant, its large, uncovered windows showing off the cavernous inside and empty walls in the light of day. And that front yard is still messed up. It'll need some serious TLC from whoever eventually moves in there. But that cat will, from now on, have her fill of food and water, a comfy place to nap atop a carpeted cat tree, and never again have to worry about children's sticks and stones, the blazing hot sun or the driving South Texas rains.