Damn Cats
Or not. I’m awake right now because about 30 minutes ago my dog shot out the bedroom doggie door like a rocket, barking her head off. There are two odd things about this;
- This behavior is normally reserved for when she spots cats and birds in the yard.
- It’s the middle of the damn night.
Now, we get cats on our roof all the time. My next-door neighbors “rescue” cats, by which I mean they put food out for strays and then ignore the fact that the wretched animals wander through my yard crapping all over my roof and lawn and giving my dog some new friends to chase. It could have been my barely-post-REM monkey-brain over-imagining things, but the sound I heard immediately after my dog burst outside sounded a lot like two 200lb cats sliding swiftly off my roof and subsequently jumping my fence.
This concerns me because last week my water heater broke and started leaking all over the place, which means that late last week and today I had a pair of plumbers (read: strangers) in my home to replace the unit. I don’t live an ostentatious lifestyle, but I do have nice things. . . things a potential criminal would certainly notice. Also, the plumbers themselves were both flaky fellows, arriving late or not at all for each appointment, taking much longer than necessary to complete their work, and trying to sell me or my landlord on various crap we didn’t need. They were lazy and inefficient.
At one point my landlord, an ex-cop, remarked that he was concerned that one of the contractors may have been on drugs. I have to trust his judgment on such matters because I really don’t know a thing about the effects of illicit mind-altering chemicals; I’ve avoided them and their users my whole life[1]. Besides, dammit, I’m an engineer, not a pharmacologist. Both of us agreed that we just wanted them to finish the job they started and never come back.
All of these things were running through my mind as I tried to determine what could possibly make a noise like two very large animals scurrying off my roof in such a hurry in the middle of the night. Fun fact: cats on my roof don’t scurry off when my dog barks at them. They look at her with an expression that says, “Dog, I’m 12 feet off the ground. What the hell are you going to do about it?”
I know that both plumbers know that I carry a firearm. I had my carry piece on me every time they were here, sometimes openly. Unable to put my fears to bed, I did what may have been the worst possible thing to do, but it was the only way I was going to be able to allay my concerns and get back to sleep. I grabbed my 1911 and my Surefire, and I went outside. I inspected my roof and found nothing. No intruders and no cats. Nothing unusual in the back yard itself. The dog seemed to have calmed down. The Surefire: really damn bright. Shining that thing at something is like turning on the Sun.
The whole incident highlights my need for a dedicated home-defense shotgun. My 870 is a trap gun; the 28″ barrel is too long for effective close defense, and I don’t even have any buckshot or slug loads for it. I could get a shorter barrel for it, but it’d cost almost as much as buying a whole new shotgun, especially when J&Gs sells police trade-ins all the time. My M14 is not suitable for aiming at anything on the roof (missed shots would travel for miles), and even with level shots overpenetration is a serious concern with that weapon. I love the 1911, but it shouldn’t be my go-to weapon if I’m concerned that I might be walking into a situation. Plus, a good tactical shotgun would give me someplace to put my M6X.
I’m going to try to get some sleep.
- I have this phobia of ever not being in complete control of my actions. It’s the same reason I don’t drink alcohol. [↩]