shere kahn

I was violently allergic to cats when I was a kid. The swollen eyes, scratch-till-you-bleed sores, and hacking cough. It’s lessened as I’ve gotten a little older, but now I react to cats with an intense anxiety and concern that my body might revert back to a state of vehement rejection. So no, I’m not really a “cat person,” but I don’t have anything against them either. Sometimes I worry that we’re trying to tame teeny, tiny jungle cats, but other than shallow scratches, cats haven’t really posed too much of a threat.

It’s been five nights now that I’ve heard something like an aggressive cat standoff, but nothing cute like in Fievel Goes West; a real hissing, howling confrontation. I’m assuming it takes place out on the street (where all good face-offs should), though the reason for such a quarrel is unknown. Most of the cats I see on the street seem perfectly nice. They’d rub up against my leg if I didn’t quicken my step, I’m sure, and I didn’t hear of any attacks on the small children who paraded through our neighborhood this last Halloween.

What I know is that it’s gotten worse in the last few days. The screeching fights wind and night to reach my top floor triple-decker apartment. It’s sudden, intense, and then it subsides. By the time I got up last night, I could only hear the wind and creaking of the oak in my back yard. The cats had moved on or solved their problem.

But this morning, there was cat shit on my deck. A nice, neat coil of moist, brown feces right at my doorway.

I don’t know how a cat made it to the third floor (could be that oak and it’s branches that hang just above my deck, but that would affirm my theory that cats are in fact mini-lions), and I don’t know why it chose to defecate in the entryway.

At any rate, I hope, for the cats’ sake, that the street brawling stops. I also hope they learn about trespassing.