I’ve hit a home run over the fence in a tee-ball game*. I’ve thrown 5 touchdowns in a game when I was playing football at Florida State**. I’ve kicked 3 home runs in a kickball game just to make sure my teammate Matt***, who had kicked 2 home runs, didn’t win Player of the Week. I’ve beaten Jeremy in ping pong so badly that his mind has erased the memory to protect his ego. I’ve gone 0-1 for zero points before getting ejected from a homecoming week student-teacher basketball game. And yet, despite all these very, very impressive accolades, catching a cat with my bare hands**** was by far the greatest athletic feat of my life.
It all started two months ago. My wife and I closed on our new house and started moving our stuff in. Randomly, the previous owner (a sweet old lady who moved across town to downsize) showed up with a can of cat food and a bowl. Before we could even figure out what was going on, this cat came out of the woods meowing like crazy, ran up to her and did that weird thing only cats and shy kids do where they rub up against your legs while also completely ignoring you. The lady fed the cat some nasty wet cat food that she scraped out of the can into a bowl with her finger (gross!) and poured it some bottled water (Zephyrhills).
The old lady explained that she had fed and bonded with this feral cat over the last few years, and that she was now worried about it. I told her not to worry and that I would feed the cat now that she had moved out. Either she knew I was lying or she didn’t trust me because she came back to feed the cat the next day. And again the next day. And the day after that. And, almost every single day between then and now. Two months have gone by, and she still shows up.
It’s awkward to say the least, when you pop into your garage to grab a screwdriver and an old lady greets you with a hello while she feeds a cat that isn’t yours ten feet outside your kitchen. Or when you’re dragging your previous home owner’s ugly blinds, curtains, and counter tops down to the curb for garbage collection and she pulls up to feed her cat. Or you come home from work and there are bowls crawling with ants trying to feast on the remnants of cat food stuck to the edge of the bowl. It started making me angry. I thought about telling her not to come back, but she is just a sweet old lady who is lonely. I thought about making the cat disappear, but as much as I hate cats, I’m not a monster. I hoped Hurricane Dorian would take care of the problem for me, but it skirted the coast and barely even brought rain here. The only option I had left: catch the cat.
It was about a week in that I realized that this lady didn’t just want to feed the cat, she wanted to take the cat home. She was lonely, and she just moved away from her only friend, this cat. One day she brought a little red pet crate. She would try to pick the cat up while it was eating. The cat would never let her, and obviously wouldn’t walk into the crate to imprison itself voluntarily. Whenever I came near, the cat would run off. It wouldn’t let me within 10 feet of it. But I didn’t want a feral cat begging for food everyday, and I really didn’t want an old lady showing up whenever she wanted. I was determined to catch the cat.
In my first attempt to catch the cat, I began feeding it by leaving a bowl of cat food INSIDE the red crate with the door open. I would be nowhere near so that it got comfortable eating inside the crate. The cat seemed to have no problem eating in the crate, so I moved it into the garage, left the side door open, and went inside. A few minutes later, I snuck (I know it’s sneaked but nobody says sneaked) out the front door and around the house to the garage window. I peered in and saw the cat’s tail sticking out of the crate. So I tip-toed over to the side door, the cat’s only way out of my garage, and reached for the doorknob. Just as I grabbed the handle and began to slam the door, the cat darted out in the nick of time. So close. I tried this a few more times, but the cat was on to me at this point.
The next thing I tried was to put a bounty on the cat. I offered some neighborhood kids and my friends’ kids 20 bucks if they could catch the cat. This yielded no results. Kids these days, amirite? The market price rose to $50, but still no results. Jeremy told his kids that if they did catch the cat they should say to me, “$200 or I let it go.”
Since the kids were no use, I bought a raccoon trap off Amazon (use our link to help support the show!). A student of mine mentioned they used one to try and catch a raccoon but caught a feral cat instead. I immediately clicked “Buy Now.” The day the trap came, I was certain I would have a cat within hours. I went outside about an hour before the old lady normally shows up and the cat was there! I put the food in and covered the trap with towels and cardboard to make look cozy like the crate it was used to eating in. I went inside and watched from the window. The cat was wise. It knew. I don’t know how, but it knew. When the lady got there, I wouldn’t let her feed it. She expressed some concern that the cat would be hungry, but I assured her if she wanted to catch the cat (which she did, she even showed up with a butterfly net one day), we should let it go hungry. Then it would have to go into the trap to eat.
Three days went by. I changed the food out in the trap every morning and evening. Still no cat. Instead, I caught a baby opossum. I considered spray painting it and delivering it to the old lady’s house but didn’t think it would pass. The old lady is pretty sharp.
This brings us to Sunday night. Two months of unwanted visitors of both the feline and geriatric kind. I came home and the old lady pulled in right behind me. I rolled my eyes and then greeted her as friendly as I could pretend to be. I set up the trap, put the food in, and watched the old lady try to convince the cat to go in. The cat meowed in protest. I’d seen this scene every night for two weeks with no progress at all. The cat wouldn’t even approach the trap, it just sat back 5 feet acting all entitled. This had become the status quo, and I assumed it would continue until one of them, the cat or the old lady, expired. I finally gave up. I took the food out of the trap and let the cat eat.
I was defeated. Dejected. Embarrassed. Bested by a puny little creature with a brain the size of a walnut. But in my state of shame, I noticed something. The cat was much closer to me than it had ever been. I knelt down and reached my hand out to see how it would react. It didn’t. It peeked up at me a little, but it just kept eating. So I went inside and grabbed what is my biggest and heaviest blanket — a huge black and gold blanket that my good friend Zack knitted for me as a wedding gift. I went back out to where the cat was eating, the old lady watching. I knelt back down, holding the blanket with both hands and inching closer. The cat stared at me, but continued to eat. I waited. Perfectly still. I watched closely as the cat’s hind legs started to relax and its butt sat down.
“I got you now,” I said out loud. I think I wanted the cat to know there was nothing it could do to stop what was about to happen. Then with the ferocity of a pouncing lion, I lunged forward, throwing the blanket over the cat while simultaneously grabbing it with both hands. The cat struggled but I easily overpowered it (I benched 225 lbs once in college, not to brag). I picked it up, still in the blanket, and ran to the back porch where I had left the red pet crate. I saw my brother-in-law through the window and yelled to him to come help me. He grabbed the crate and we went around the house, through the garage, and into the laundry room. The cat was surprisingly calm, but at one point it wriggled unexpectedly and almost got free. I managed to snag it by its hind legs, thwarting its last ditch effort to free itself from my grasp. Once in the laundry room, we closed both doors as a backup plan. That way, if the cat got free when I tried to put it in the crate, it would be trapped in a very small room with just me, my brother-in-law, its teeth, claws, and whatever diseases it may or may not be carrying. A fail safe plan.
Thankfully, I got the cat in the crate with the door shut, no problem. I was high on adrenaline and victory. I wanted to talk trash, but the cat just meowed pathetically. I felt like a cage fighter that just knocked out an opponent who had been talking trash for a month leading up to our fight, and instead of standing over the defeated and gloating, I just hugged him and said, “good fight.” I put the crate in the old lady’s trunk and followed her to her house. We let the cat out on her screened in porch and put out some food and water (Dasani this time). Before I left, I looked back at the cat one last time. It was a worthy opponent.
As I type this, I have not seen the cat, or the old lady for that matter, for three days now. It’s a great feeling, but I can’t help but wonder how long before the cat returns, with vengeance in mind. It will be back. I know it will. It’s just a matter of when. Like when Elaine moved the barking dog on Seinfeld, it will find its way back. Until then, cat. Until then.
*I was actually in the league above, but they needed an extra player, so…
**Intramurals
***KJ the Intern’s husband
****Sort of
Bro you are such a liar. I can say with relative certainty that you will never beat me in ping pong again. By my count you barely won two or three times and haven’t beaten me in ping pong in over 5 years.
So you don’t remember? You’re proving my point.