Neighborhood irritations

“Good fences make good neighbors” is fairly modern. It comes from Robert Frost’s poem Mending Wall from 1914 but even Benjamin Franklin in Poor Richard's Almanac version “Love your neighbor; yet don’t pull down your hedge” is saying the same thing.

The problem with fences is they don't keep out the neighbor's unaltered Tom cat which is one of my pet peeves.

I have written about his problem and this cat before. This continues to irritate me because these particular neighbors will have nothing to do with anyone else in the neighborhood, so it is impossible to talk to them about the problem.

I know scads of people who believe a cat is not happy unless they are patrolling the neighborhood, peeing on people's car tires, placing little cat pawprints on everyone's car and killing the birds and squirrels.

Now, I like cats but I am not fond of irresponsible pet owners and there seem to be an abundance of them in my neighborhood.

So I am having a discussion with another neighbor, who has been feeding this particular cat and providing a warm bed outside for it because the people who own the cat have been gone for a couple of days, leaving the cat outside.

This is the way we discovered the cat has not been neutered. So we are going to take the cat and have him fixed. We cannot force the neighbors to care the proper way for the cat. We can make sure he does not impregnate any unaltered females in the neighborhood, which I am sure exist. Hopefully, this will also prevent the caterwauling which goes on whenever he smells a female in heat.

If I had my way, I would catch the cat and find another home for it, but there is such an abundance of unwanted cats and kittens in the area, the best I can do is have him fixed.

Will my neighbors be happy? I don't care. If they would take proper care of their animals, I wouldn't be having this discussion.

Please spay and neuter your animals. Don't place that responsibility on others. Don't be part of the problem, be part of the solution. Fences don't keep out cats, only humans.