Going bats over cats

It is not true that I have always hated cats.

We had cats as well as dogs when I was a kid, and I have vivid memories of one giving birth to kittens right beside me after school one afternoon.

But, over the years, they have moved pretty much to the top of my list of least favorite pets. (Pythons and boa constrictors would edge them out for the top slot.)

That means, of course, that cats love me.

They apparently can sense when a cat-hater enters a room and know instinctively that the person isn't going to bother them. As a result, they immediately feel comfortable.

That's why, in countless interviews, I have had cats jump up into my laps or onto my shoulders. They knew I didn't like them, knew I wasn't going to bug them like cat lovers often do, and became my new best friends.

Our neighborhood cats know I don't care for them.

They've seen me jump out the back door waving my arms and yelling, "Scat!" at them so many times when they are threatening the bird feeders that they know I'm not on their team. I'm a bird guy, not a cat guy.

But the cats know how to get revenge.

It's easy on their part, and there may not be much I can do about it short of buying a shotgun or a case of D-Con.

They sleep on my car.

To be precise, they jump on my car with muddy feet, waltz around a few times, then plonk down on my hood for a nap.

I've complained to our neighbors. But with cats you never know precisely who owns what, and there's not much leverage for changing the situation.

All in all, it's not a big deal. Or it wasn't until my car died and needed to be replaced.

The cats had slept on the old car. (For all I know, they were responsible for the mechanical problems that sent it to the morgue.) But the new car deserved better.

Okay, it's not a new car. It's a five-year-old model, but it's new to me, and I'm fond of it.

So I wasn't thrilled to go out - even before I'd bought it - to find muddy cat prints all over the hood.

I was even less thrilled Friday, when the last of the paperwork was complete and the car was polished within an inch of its life, to come out and find cat tracks stretching from the hood, up the back window, across the roof, down the windshield, and ending in a fandango on the hood. In fact, I cannot publish my immediate response to the problem.

But, angry as I was, I did not kill a cat.

Instead, after picking up the mail Saturday morning, I took the car to the car wash, invested $1.25, and had it looking cat-free in no time.

It was only while going home that I ran into other problems.

There I was, on Portland's Industrial Park Drive, "air drying" the car, when I looked up and saw them: A small flock of Canada geese, on a collision course.

Fortunately, there was no one behind me. I was able to slow down and let the poop-laden flock make its way harmlessly to the southwest.

But it was a close call.

It's not true that I've always hated Canada geese.[[In-content Ad]]