Secrets of the Cat_ Its Lore, Legend, and Lives - Barbara Holland [2]
Conferences were held.
“He’s insane,” we said. “He’s psychotic.”
“At least he can’t be rabid. He’s been coming around for months, since the middle of winter, and if he had rabies he’d be long dead.”
“If only the other cats would stick together. Gang up on him.” “Cats don’t join armies.”
“Besides, they’re all afraid of him. It’s like saying, why didn’t the plane passengers gang up on the hijackers? Who’s going to gang up first?”
“If we could just get hold of him somehow and take him to the SPCA.”
“You’re not suggesting we pick him up? In our hands?”
“Maybe if we could catch him in one of those box traps, and then just leave him in the trap and put it in the car?”
The vet, who was sympathetic to our efforts and bored with cleaning and stitching up wounds, lent us a drop-gate trap and offered to kill the madman if we caught him. Blackie avoided the trap. It can’t have been very convincing; no matter what we baited it with, nothing at all went into it.
Blackie ambushed the smallest and prettiest of the Three Girls and ripped her ear and slashed her eye.
“We could poison him,” said Judy. “I throw food into the bushes for him. I could poison it.”
“That would be the day he was off killing someone else’s cats. One of ours would find it instead.”
“We could shoot him.”
It kept coming around to that. At first it was a joke. We weren’t people with guns, and God knows we weren’t people who shot cats. Shot cats? Judy and Bob were a famous hostel for needy cats, and bore, they always said, an invisible mark on the door such as bums were said to make during the Great Depression, meaning “Here are softies.” But summer came, and Blackie’s terrorist attacks continued; no cat had actually been killed yet, but antibiotic pills had become a time-consuming part of the family routine, and the gun came to seem less bizarre.
“He’s probably in some kind of pain,” we argued. “That could be why he’s so vicious. It would be a mercy to shoot him.”
“He might have had a head injury. Something pressing on his brain makes him berserk.”
“Where would we get this gun?”
“Terry’s got one. He’s got a whole armory, actually, but he could bring something lightweight that wouldn’t knock holes in the neighborhood.”
“Would he do it for us?”
“Sure. We’ll give him a beer. I don’t suppose it’ll be the first cat he’s shot; he’s one of those sportsmen types.”
“After all, we have to think of our own. They can’t live like this.”
“It’s agreed, then.”
We had sat in judgment on Blackie and pronounced him miserable, in pain as well as psychotic. Besides, we wouldn’t have to pull the trigger personally, just point out the lurking Blackie and go inside and hold our ears, praying that Terry, not a cat person, could tell one black cat with white trim from the others.
“We’re going away for the weekend,” said Judy. “We’ll be back Tuesday. Let’s do it Tuesday night at feeding time.”
“Tuesday night.” We all nodded, feeling that we should prick our fingers and seal the decision in blood, to share the guilt equally.
Judy and Bob went away for the weekend, and I fed their cats. Feeding their cats was not child’s play. The assortment of battered tins and dishes covered half the backyard, and protocol had to be observed. Muffie, senior cat and major-domo and sergeant-at-arms, followed me into the kitchen to supervise. It was one of his duties to see that meals were served on time, and to find and chivvy the feeder if they were late. Muffie was getting old, but he delegated no responsibility, had no lieutenants, and no other cat seemed ready to take over and let him retire. He was looking a bit careworn and heavy in his mind. Poor Muff, he would have