A Miscreant Revealed

This is the time of year when critters traditionally try to come inside from the garden to avoid the winter weather, even though San Diego's winters are really pretty mild.

So I wasn't too surprised the other night to see our two youngest cats stalking a spider that had made it into the house downstairs and was scurrying across the rug.  Knowing Bailey and Jenna, I felt the spider's life expectancy was measured in minutes, if not seconds, so I quickly grabbed a cup, scooped it up and deported the spider to the outdoors.  The kittens kept up the watch for a while, but the spider apparently realized it was flirting with danger and didn't reappear.

Draft Blocker, AKA Cat Toy.  Isn't He Cute?

Later, while I was watching TV, I heard a strange, creepy slithering noise behind me.  Thinking that a sizeable snake had also managed to get into the house, I jumped up and found that it was our senior male cat, Chutzpaw, dragging a draft blocker across the floor.  Cindy's Mom gave me this years ago to stop the drafts that chill my downstairs office.  Naturally, the cats think this is just another big kitty toy.  Every day, I put this draft blocker in front of one of the downstairs doors.  Almost every morning, we find that it has been laboriously dragged somewhere else, usually onto the stairs or even all the way upstairs.  

We knew one of the cats was doing this, but didn't know which one it was.  Now that we know it's Chutzpaw, maybe we'll start calling him Sisypuss, since he apparently feels compelled to repeat this process every night.

We really could use a big King Snake around here to take out the gophers and California Ground Squirrels that are digging up our yard.

Just not in the house.