My Cat is Luca Brasi

I saw it coming, and yet...

A while ago I mused that, in a former life, my cat may have been a popular Italian grocer who was maybe a bit of a philanderer. Well...I got the Italian part right. And although he is much cuter than the above mentioned mafia enforcer, he nonetheless has a predilection for the same kind of, shall we say, "offer."

Several days ago, I came home from work and found a little something next to my bed. Please pay attention to the "next to" part of that sentence. It looks rather odd, like maybe a large beetle or something. But, on closer inspection, it turns out to be part of a rat snout.

And now I feel compelled to issue a grossness warning. It only gets worse from here. So if your stomach is easily disturbed, stop reading now.

Yes, in fact, only part of a rat snout. Apparently head and ears, delicious. Eyes, nose, tongue, whiskers, not so much. (But, as another cat-owning friend pointed out - probably a delicacy in China.) The cat got a scolding - like how you do with a puppy - you put their nose in it, and say "No" rather forcefully. And if you know cats, you also know that all this was done to no avail.

Let's call this "The Rat Snout Incident." After this happened, I began to compare it to a certain scene in The Godfather. It turns out I did so at my own peril.

And now, you can see what's coming, too.

In the wee hours of this morning, I hear the cat come in through the window, meowing in a rather muffled tone, accompanied by a kind of swishing sound. Oh no, I thought. And I was right. He's standing next to the bed with a rat in his mouth. So I scold him, and bound out of bed, and he jumps back through the window. I go back to bed.

Here, I will point out my fatal mistake: I did not close the window.

Sometime later, I roll over in bed, and feel something soft and furry and a little lumpy at my ankle. The irrational, still hopeful, part of my brain thinks: It could be fuzzy dice, or those tennis socks with the little pom-poms on the end. Rational part of brain: You don't own fuzzy dice or tennis socks and how would they get into your bed anyway? Irrational part of brain: Please let it miraculously be fuzzy dice or tennis socks anyway.

I turn on the light. I pull back the sheets. Dead rat.

I didn't do that scream where the camera pulls back through the universe. I just thought, "Of course." And, "At least it's not a huge ugly sewer rat, but one of those cute fruit rats that's somewhere between a mouse and a rat... poor cute fruit rat." And also, "At least it's in one piece."

And now I'm happy that my former roommate's mother bought a gigantic box of surgical gloves from Costco. I remove the deceased rodent to the outdoors (while saying some mantras for his/her benefit). Frodo immediately shows up and starts stalking it again. So I whisk him inside and give him what I believe is referred to as "A Good Old Fashioned Talking To."

He's looking at me with his cutest face, and responding with his cutest high-pitched meow, and I'm not buying it. I keep at it. I almost went to "I'm very disappointed in you," but at that point, I think he's got it. He knows I'm unhappy with him. I'm also fairly certain he has no idea why.

So it's back to the cat bib. Although, I'm not sure it will make much of a difference, since once he showed up with the cat bib on and a rat in his mouth. Maybe it's time for the extra large cat bib.

Also, now that I think about it, if you were to meet Frodo, you might think, "Hm, cute, quiet, unassuming, sleeps a lot." I guess we know who the real serial killer in the neighborhood is.

It turns out one of my neighbors is a Knife Thrower

So I get home from a little grocery shopping last night, and hear, from somewhere in the neighborhood, a loud twangy whacking sound. Like someone beating cement with a lead pipe. I think, Wow, that's loud. And also kind of annoying for a Sunday evening. Someone must be... and here I draw a blank. This kind of sound does not correspond to: a. car maintenance b. home repair c. croquet, badminton, bocce ball or any other sort of back yard amusement (no, not even horse shoes).

I go inside, put groceries away, feed the cat. Still very loud whacking sound. I can't stand it, I have to see what's going on. So I go and stand on one of the benches next to the fence that surrounds the back patio/pool deck and look over into the neighbor's back yard. And there's a guy, holding three throwing knives, looking with concentration at a wooden target, and throwing his knives.

At this point I think, should I say something? And then I think: Hm. Airborne knives. Maybe not.

So I go back inside. And decided that this was a good thing. Why? Because at least I know he's not a serial killer. Whenever they interview the neighbors of a person who turned out to be a serial killer, they always say things like, "He was so quiet and unassuming." If there's anything knife throwing is not, it's quiet and unassuming.

I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that I will never say these words: "Oh, yeah, that guy who murdered eight people and left a weird circus-like crime scene behind? I TOTALLY saw him practicing his knife throwing. And everyone within half a mile TOTALLY heard him practicing his knife throwing. But he wasn't quiet and unassuming, so we weren't worried."

It's kind of like that scene in The World According to Garp when an airplane flies into the house that Garp and his wife are looking at, and he goes, "We'll take it." Because what are the odds of that happening twice?

Instead, I'm going to think that my neighbor is practicing for the circus, or some other profession in which knife throwing is important. I don't know, do they do it at the Renaissance Faire?