Eviction Papers Are Served

The Purge has begun.

Our cats are officially felines non grata. Their salad days of lolling about Thevictorian garage, traversing the trusses like rock show roadies, dangling tails off plywood sections like disembodied bicycle-handlebar-decorations, plopping onto T-Hoe's roof like a lion from a tree limb onto an unsuspecting gazelle, are over.

Perhaps you remember our mystery pooper. The pooper that left huge poops too big for cat anuses, poops in a puddle of pee, poops with segments like a giant Tootsie Roll log. We never caught the mystery pooper. But the cats took notes from that ne'er-poop-well. Good for the goose, good for the gander, it seems. Only this pooper was no goose. The cats began taking liberties with our concrete garage floor. Marking their territory back. Not every day. Days after a mystery poop. Carefully avoiding the previously-used area that was drenched with bleach. Short of mopping the entire garage floor with bleach, and having weirdos in hazmat suits show up on our doorstep, we've decided to rescind garage privileges.

The precipitating incident was this evening. Hick arrived home first. As The Pony and I came up the driveway, he pulling our green trash dumpster the length of the long driveway like a rickshaw, and I holding T-Hoe's horses so as not to run over my little Pony, my garage door opened on its own. Then I saw Hick pushing a broom. The one we got him for Christmas. He wasn't pushing poop. He was sweeping piles of fine driveway dirt that melted off and dried during the twelve snowstorms.

"I've had it with these cats!"

"I told you to lock the cat door. They can sleep outside now. Too bad, so sad. They've fouled the place they live. They don't like us, anyway. You can never pet them except for Genius" (the cat, not the boy).

"I caught Genius right there in the corner peeing!"

"Well. Put their food dish out on the shelf, and lock their door. Enough is enough. Feed them once in the morning, like the dogs. They'll eat, or they'll go hungry, or they'll hunt."

"Yeah. I think we're going to have to."

You'd think those fleabags would know a good thing when they had it. After all, we rescued them from the mailbox road as kittens. Gave them lots of food. A whole garage. Love. And that very special operation to remove their babymakers. They stopped short of biting the hand that feeds them.

Peeing on the floor that shelters them is bad enough.