After reading my post about my newfound proficiency with a slingshot, one of my sisters said she had been wondering why I hadn’t been blogging. It’s nice to know that when I don’t show up here, there are one or two people who miss it.
I told her that one of the reasons I haven’t been writing is because the most interesting/exciting/ridiculous thing to happen to us lately is it’s cat mating season so our sleep has been an interrupted mess as the cat yowling sets off the dogs, wakes us up, we yell at the dogs, try to fall back asleep, and repeat. All. Night. Long.
I’m positive I’ve written about this before . . . probably each year around this time, but there are at least 20 stray cats on our street. At any time of day I can walk outside and spot at least 6 lying on top of cars, under cars and in driveways. Well, this time of year they “fight” all night, filling the air with yowls and shrieks. The dogs hear the cats, jump up and run back and forth in our bedroom panting, wanting to get outside to chase them. The other night it was so ridiculous that Josh went outside at 2am and aimed the garden hose in the direction of the noise and broke up the cat “fight.” At least that seemed to shut them down for the rest of the night.
So far the only solution that has been mildly successful is playing cat meowing and hissing noises throughout the day to try and desensitize the dogs to cat noises. Thanks YouTube for providing a video library of cat fights to choose from. Of course that means I have to listen to cat yowling and fighting in the daytime, but desperate times. If it means we can sleep at night it will be worth it.
