by Tdarcos » Fri Jul 29, 2022 10:02 am
I'll set the background for the story. The actual story won't make much sense without the context, but if you want, you can skip this and go on to the next entry below.
Back in California in around 1986-87, my family lived in an 8 unit apartment complex in Long Beach. I remember they are 4x4 apartments, the front ground floor apartment is #1, the front second floor apartment is #5.
So we were living in #6: me, my brother, my mother, our two dogs, and cats. Lots of cats. My mother was just too nice to the neighborhood cats, she'd feed them, which attracted more of them. Eventually, one of the cats that was pregnant went into a nice, dark closet to give birth. This brought us a litter of yet
i]more cats to deal with.
Fortunately, one thing the cats did do was go outside to do their business; we did not keep a litter box; all of our animals go outside to piss and shit. (I'll make an exception here; I think that when the mother and kittens were still nursing they would use the closet; once they were able to walk, their mother taught them to go outside.) Thus, the apartment had no "animal" odor. Now, the dogs I had to walk, but the cats went out when they needed to. But we did not leave the front door or window open; no, the cats found their own method.
The cheap-ass landlord never replaced the screens on the two rear windows (this being a two bedroom apartment). Thus we, in effect, had a "self-service" method for cats to come-and-go as they pleased. Each cat, when they felt the need to leave, would walk into the left bedroom, jump up on the bed, jump to the windowsill, then jump about a roughly 3' - 5' gap (I never measured it) to the wooden fence behind the building, then jump down either forward to the small walkway between our building and the fence, where the meters and building circuit breakers were located, or jump back to land on our neighbor's lawn, then to wherever they chose.
So you can understand how the cats could routinely jump from our windowsill to the fence, understand it was a typical 6' "post" style where round half logs show to the outside, and flat boards on the inside, with a support beam about 1' above the ground, and 1' below the top of the fence. The cats would land on the 4" crossbeam. Or, when it was time to eat, they'd do the reverse: jump up to the top of the six-foot fence, then launch themselves up to the windowsill inside. Sometimes I'd see 4-5 cats just sitting around on the fence, probably deciding where to go.
We had
a lot of cats. When my mother fed the cats, I guess she did it on the same schedule, because they all started accumulating in the house at the sane time, and congregate in the small kitchen, typically filling it. I am not kidding; when my mother fed them, you could not see as much as a centimeter of the floor tiles; they completely covered it, edge-to-edge as a living wall-to-wall carpet of cats.
I came to the realization, when one day I walked out to the kitchen, and saw the writhing mass of cat fur that covered the entire floor, that this was ridiculous. I said, out loud, "We got too many fucking cats!" I didn't do anything about it; they were my mother's responsibility and not my problem. I was busy scratching out a living, working 8 hours a day and commuting an additional 4 (this will be explored in a separate article).
To demonstrate how many cats were in the apartment, one time I picked up a few, and then made an announcement. "Some men have held a
Cat o' nine tails. I'm holding nine cats
with tails!" I had to put them down a few seconds later, they were not happy about being shoved together.
We had
so many cats that my mother told me how she talked to some of the neighbors (who didn't know she was the one doing it), and they'd all comment about how right around 4 o'clock every day,
all the neighborhood cats would disappear, then reappear after about 30-45 minutes.
During our stay there, at some point the people in apartment #2, directly below us, were evicted. We weren't told why, but the usual reason is non-payment of rent. After the downstairs apartment was vacant and cleaned, the offsite manager came by. He explained that some of the other tenants complained about the noise myself and my brother made, either from walking around, or using the stairs twice a day. He
very strongly suggested we move downstairs into #2. So we did.
This didn't change the situation, the cats just followed us downstairs, and when they left out the back window, either jumped down to the back, or jumped up to the top of the fence, then down the other side.
Now that I've explained myself, I'll go on to the story.
I'll set the background for the story. The actual story won't make much sense without the context, but if you want, you can skip this and go on to the next entry below.
Back in California in around 1986-87, my family lived in an 8 unit apartment complex in Long Beach. I remember they are 4x4 apartments, the front ground floor apartment is #1, the front second floor apartment is #5.
So we were living in #6: me, my brother, my mother, our two dogs, and cats. Lots of cats. My mother was just too nice to the neighborhood cats, she'd feed them, which attracted more of them. Eventually, one of the cats that was pregnant went into a nice, dark closet to give birth. This brought us a litter of yet [i]i]more[/i] cats to deal with.
Fortunately, one thing the cats did do was go outside to do their business; we did not keep a litter box; all of our animals go outside to piss and shit. (I'll make an exception here; I think that when the mother and kittens were still nursing they would use the closet; once they were able to walk, their mother taught them to go outside.) Thus, the apartment had no "animal" odor. Now, the dogs I had to walk, but the cats went out when they needed to. But we did not leave the front door or window open; no, the cats found their own method.
The cheap-ass landlord never replaced the screens on the two rear windows (this being a two bedroom apartment). Thus we, in effect, had a "self-service" method for cats to come-and-go as they pleased. Each cat, when they felt the need to leave, would walk into the left bedroom, jump up on the bed, jump to the windowsill, then jump about a roughly 3' - 5' gap (I never measured it) to the wooden fence behind the building, then jump down either forward to the small walkway between our building and the fence, where the meters and building circuit breakers were located, or jump back to land on our neighbor's lawn, then to wherever they chose.
So you can understand how the cats could routinely jump from our windowsill to the fence, understand it was a typical 6' "post" style where round half logs show to the outside, and flat boards on the inside, with a support beam about 1' above the ground, and 1' below the top of the fence. The cats would land on the 4" crossbeam. Or, when it was time to eat, they'd do the reverse: jump up to the top of the six-foot fence, then launch themselves up to the windowsill inside. Sometimes I'd see 4-5 cats just sitting around on the fence, probably deciding where to go.
We had [i]a lot[/i] of cats. When my mother fed the cats, I guess she did it on the same schedule, because they all started accumulating in the house at the sane time, and congregate in the small kitchen, typically filling it. I am not kidding; when my mother fed them, you could not see as much as a centimeter of the floor tiles; they completely covered it, edge-to-edge as a living wall-to-wall carpet of cats.
I came to the realization, when one day I walked out to the kitchen, and saw the writhing mass of cat fur that covered the entire floor, that this was ridiculous. I said, out loud, "We got too many fucking cats!" I didn't do anything about it; they were my mother's responsibility and not my problem. I was busy scratching out a living, working 8 hours a day and commuting an additional 4 (this will be explored in a separate article).
To demonstrate how many cats were in the apartment, one time I picked up a few, and then made an announcement. "Some men have held a [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_o%27_nine_tails]Cat o' nine tails[/url]. I'm holding nine cats [i]with[/i] tails!" I had to put them down a few seconds later, they were not happy about being shoved together.
We had [i]so many[/i] cats that my mother told me how she talked to some of the neighbors (who didn't know she was the one doing it), and they'd all comment about how right around 4 o'clock every day, [u]all[/u] the neighborhood cats would disappear, then reappear after about 30-45 minutes.
During our stay there, at some point the people in apartment #2, directly below us, were evicted. We weren't told why, but the usual reason is non-payment of rent. After the downstairs apartment was vacant and cleaned, the offsite manager came by. He explained that some of the other tenants complained about the noise myself and my brother made, either from walking around, or using the stairs twice a day. He [i]very strongly[/i] suggested we move downstairs into #2. So we did.
This didn't change the situation, the cats just followed us downstairs, and when they left out the back window, either jumped down to the back, or jumped up to the top of the fence, then down the other side.
Now that I've explained myself, I'll go on to the story.