There were cockroaches everywhere, in the cupboards, in the drawers, and on the ceiling. It seemed like they liked to come out at night and play with the mice. I thought about demanding a refund, but the landlord had already moved me twice and this bug infested apartment was way nicer than the previous ones, and so I decided to stay.
There were a lot of stray cats lurking around, probably drawn by all of the easy meals that appeared to be living at my place. If I could just coax one of them cats in and make him a pet, maybe he would scare off some of my furry intruders, or perhaps eat them. Then, I would only have to figure out how to get rid of the cockroaches.
I walked down to the store on the corner and bought a can of tuna and a bottle of bleach. An old derelict behind some bushes looked like he was contemplating a robbery, but after identifying the contents of my purchase, he changed his mind, and I made it home unscathed. I opened a window and placed the tuna on the sill, then began my antiseptic assault on the cockroaches in the kitchen. Twenty minutes later, it was a lot cleaner, and I heard a cat meow. As I approached the window, I could see a big Tabby fighting a giant cockroach over the can of tuna. “Here Kitty, Kitty,” I said, in my kindest cat luring voice. But to no avail. As soon as I got near, he backed away and tippy toed off, never to be seen again. I thought of using a trap, but I didn’t have one. All I had was a small, tangled ball of twine. And so I made a loop and put it on the window sill with some tuna in the center of it. One scruffy stray after another snatched the tuna from the trap faster than I could tighten up the loop, and before long the can was empty. Several cockroaches had begun chewing on me while my attention was diverted, and when it finally dawned on me, I jumped up and began flailing like a mad man and swatting myself mercilessly until I noticed a herd of cats in the window gazing at me in apparent amusement. But the moment I quit whacking cockroaches and switched to kitty catching mode, the cats took off and left me standing there looking stupid.
After a few days of this I was about to give up on catching a cat. Then, it occurred to me that I could just adopt a damn cat from the shelter!
“What an idiot!” I said out loud as I slapped at a cockroach with a rolled-up newspaper, then threw an old shoe at a mouse that was trying to eat the power cord on my toaster.
The window display at the shelter was overflowing with cute little kittens in search of a home, but I was afraid that one of those adorable little kitties would be attacked by an angry mob of cockroaches in the night, then carted off and eaten by rats.
The young woman at the counter was giving me a quizzical look as I entered…tilting her head to the side. I thought it was because I was itching and swatting imaginary cockroaches until she said, “You might want to leave your pet mouse in the car,” indicating the small varmint sitting on my shoulder twitching his whiskers against my face. What, I thought, as it slowly began to dawn on me that I must have had a mouse in my coat ever since I left my apartment!
“Whaaah!” I yelled, simultaneously jumping up in the air like I was on fire, trying to brush the little varmint off my neck. “Get him off me! Get him off me!” I screamed like a girl, even though the tiny mouse had already leaped to the floor.
Incredibly the mouse seemed to survive the fall, but only to be instantly attacked and eaten by a scraggly looking black cat who, up until that moment, appeared to be afraid of his own shadow.
The young lady covered her mouth and looked at me in apologetic horror, until I boldly declared, “I’ll take that one!” Indicating the black rack of bones that was now casually licking his paw as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened.
The girl looked at me as if I’d completely lost my mind and said, “You want THAT cat?” It wasn’t as much a question as it was a statement.
“Yes!” I said enthusiastically as I wondered what that slippery substance stuck to his fur might be.
“You got something I can put him in so that he doesn’t get loose in the car?”
She looked at me like I was some kind of an idiot. “I gotta tell you,”she said, “he is not a he. He’s a SHE!”
“That’s okay,” I said, eager to get home and resume exterminating the unwelcome intruders in my apartment. “Just put him in a box for me, okay?”
“Okay…” she said in that tone that is usually followed by “I tried to warn you!”
“That cat’s a recent capture,” she said, having no effect on my feeling that I’d lucked out and found the perfect cat without all the shopping around that I thought I was going to have to do.
“That’s okay,” I said. “Just stick him in a box for me, would ya?”
“She pregnant.” She said, thinking that would be the deal breaker and I would change my mind.
“Hmmm…” I said. “Pregnant, eh?”
I didn’t really take time to consider all the implications or possible responsibilities. I was just happy to have located a mouse killer so quickly. I thought it might even be a benefit because she might be more protective and aggressive with a litter of kittens.
I opened the cardboard carrier as soon as me and my new cat crawled into my apartment through the window.
“I’m going to call you Panther!” I said proudly, as I reached into the box to extract my new mouse eating companion. But apparently, Panther was not grateful to be rescued, nor was she anxious to acquire a new friend as one might suppose, and she attacked me with the ferocity of a wild animal!
“Yee-oww!” I hollered as blood began to ooze from my shredded hands. Panther jumped out of the box, ran directly over to the open window, turned and looked over her shoulder, and said, “Meow,” then disappeared.
“Come back Panther!” I yelled at her memory.
“Dammit!” I said, as I noticed that someone had stolen my toaster while I was gone.
That night I was mauled by cockroaches and mice in my sleep.
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