So, I found out who it was who wrote me the anonymous nasty-gram about my cats. It was the wife of this guy:
Yep, the same people who dump all their lawn crap IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD PARK are the ones complaining about my cats being on their property.
The irony, it is rich.
At least this morning, she had the nuts to talk to me face to face about it instead of sending me another nasty note, I'll give her that. She rattled off a long list of things my cats had supposedly done (ripped up her plants, sprayed her siding, destroyed a solar light (!), knocked over her birdfeeders (um, okay), and I expressed mystification, seeing as how my cats have never done ONE DAMN THING to MY property.
But! I kept calm. I offered to pay for any damage that she was sure had been inflicted by one of MY cats, as opposed to the nine billion OTHER cats in the neighborhood, as long as she could show me a receipt for the cost, and I started the pot by giving her forty bucks.
Forty bucks! She got a lot nicer after that.
So then I facebook-stalked her (OH YES I DID) when I got to work, and there she is on facebook, complaining about all the GROUNDHOGS in her yard.
So ... is it my cats? Or is the GROUNDHOGS causing the problems that she's blaming on my cats?
Oh, I think I know which one it is ...
Dear neighbors: I hate you.
AND STOP DUMPING YOUR SH*T IN THE DAMN PARK. Christ.
7 comments:
ahhhh - the stupid, it burns..... (makes mom want to move out to the middle of no where sometimes)
I would definitely turn her/him in for the dumping. That is so not right and you have the photo. If they are too cheap to pay for a launch service to haul it away and too lazy to learn to mulch properly, well then dang it, don't go dumping it in the park. And you know it is not your cats if they don't do it at home.
I'm nice and all, but I would never have given her money.. you know she's just going to come back with more and more.. and now she has 'proof' that you believe it is your cats..
Random, yep, my dream is to buy 100 acres and plop a house right in the middle of it.
fmcetc., I am sorely tempted, and yet I wouldn't want my cats to end up in the middle of World War III.
Tails, I consider it "go away" money. "Here, have some money, now go away and stop bothering me." :)
I definitely believe in taking reponsibility for any damage my cats do, and I can understand how frustrating it can be when animals go where you don't want them (Deer who eat my gardens, I'm looking at YOU!)(see also: Raccoon who ended up in my bedroom). I also understand that not everybody is a cat lover, although this woman has a cat of her own, which makes things even more mystifying. Frankly, I think maybe she's just got a leeetle too much time on her hands and has now found something to obsess over.
And it's not like my cats are the only ones in the neighborhood; it's a rural suburban area, and at least thirty percent of the houses have indoor/outdoor cats.
The fact that NONE of these cats have EVER done any damage to my own property, well ...
If she comes back to the well, so to speak, I am going to offer to set up my trail cam on her property to see what exactly is doing the damage. (She did say that she SAW my cats doing the damage, and described them quite accurately; that's why I gave her the forty bucks, even though I doubt her story and think maybe she's just trying to pin random blame on my cats because she knows where they live.) Then I'll offer to set up motion detector deterrents. But no more free money.
Rockygrace, tattoo your last paragraph immediately above on the inside of your forehead. She will be back.
As to reporting them for the dumping, I'd check into the laws and penalties on that, and then reserve that threat as a "go away or else" last resort.
Hmmmm. Now I'm wondering if she had anything to do with Soda's hiding a while ago. Could she have put the fear of outside in him?
~~Silk, there is definitely a "no dumping" ordinance on the books in this town. I like the idea of using that as a bargaining chip.
Like a lot of people who take things a little too far, I think maybe she's just looking for validation. I was hoping that by agreeing to take responsibility and handing over some cashish, it would cool her off a bit. That, plus I was running late and simply did not have the time to deal with it this morning.:)
But yeah, the money train is over.
and maybe it WAS her who scared Soda! She admitted to turning the hose on cats who come into her yard, so maybe Soda got drenched and scared.
I don't know if I'm handling this the best way or not. If it had simply been a conflict between her and I, I would have told her to f*ck off, but when my cats are involved I tend to tread a little more carefully.
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