Publisher's Notebook: Cats bring misery,

By Willie Sawyers

Ihate cats. After getting up close and personal with cats the last two months, I've concluded they offer no redeeming value. I love dogs. They are faithful companions who will do anything to please their master. They provide warmth and security and require little except for food and water and a pat on the head now and then.

Cats are elusive and independent. They have an air of entitlement about them, like they are entitled to sleep wherever they want and scratch up the furniture whenever they want.

Cats repay their masters by pooping in their potted plants and bringing half-eaten baby animals up on the front porch.

Our house has been in havoc ever since a stray mama cat and her three offspring showed up under our porch. We call the mama cat Satina, after her father, Satan.

We tried to be hospitable hosts, and it wasn't long before Satina decided to take control of the household. Apparently, she didn't like the accommodations under the porch so she climbed up the lattice, clawed a hole through the screen that I had just paid to have redone, and took up residence with her offspring on my favorite lounger.

I took her and the kittens back under the porch and patched the hole, but the next morning, they were back on the lounger. Satina was determined to be where the action was, and let me tell you with three dogs in the house as well, there was plenty of action.

We couldn't enjoy our screened-in porch any longer because of all the fighting between the cats and dogs and the funky odors coming from our potted plants.

Fur would go flying as soon as we opened the door, but Satina seemed to revel in the exchanges. When a dog got near her, she'd slap it upside the head with a paw. One of my Daschunds, love its heart, had a wound over its eye for days. Even when they weren't chasing her kittens, she'd slap the dogs just for general purposes.

I put an ad in the paper and found a home for two of the kittens. I could have gotten rid of Satina and the other one, but I couldn't catch them. Now, no one wants cats who are not sociable, so it looks like I'm stuck with them.

One night, the remaining kitten got into the house on the dogs' turf and all hell broke loose. They chased it from one end of the house to the other until the kitten found refuge behind the couch. I tried to rescue it, but couldn't find it. The kitten had somehow wedged itself inside the couch.

What a predicament. I could hear it meow deep inside the couch, but had no way to get to it. My solution was to haul the couch out on the porch and the kitten would come out eventually. My wife nixed that idea because she didn't want us to look like Sanford and Son.

The only other solution was to cut a hole in the back of the couch. I rescued the kitten, but it cost me a new couch and love seat.

Satina also has spent a couple of nights inside the house, without our consent of course. She comes in when the back door opens, becomes disoriented and starts running from closet to closet. I try to catch her, but she's too fast. My main goal is to barricade the new couch and love seat.

One morning at 3:30, Satina come out from behind the television where she had been hiding. I spent the next hour in my underwear trying to get her out of the house and succeeded only when I trapped her behind the microwave.

One afternoon while we were eating supper, my wife screamed when she saw Satina with a baby rabbit in the yard. The rabbit was stunned but still alive. I rescued it from her clutches and sent it on its way. The next morning, I found the leg of a baby rabbit on my front porch. I guess she showed me.

Every few days we find a half-eaten rabbit, bird, mouse or squirrel on our porch. She's destroying the wildlife around our home.

If there are any cat lovers out there, please give me a call and rescue my family from this siege. I don't want to take her to the animal shelter or dump her somewhere, but we are in misery.

Bring a truck, because she may be stuck inside my new couch when you pick her up.

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