Saturday, December 31, 2011

Annual Cat Harassment


I was totally wrong about the live traps I saw recently.  They weren’t for catching critters to blow up after all.  They were put out in order to catch neighborhood cats.  There is a tradition here to collect as many cats as possible for the final 2 weeks of December, regardless of supposed ownership, then deposit them into a 55 gallon drums (not trash cans at all, as I had so naively deduced earlier).  The cats are collected there until midnight when they will be released so that the children that were able to stay up that late can chase and keep what they can catch until NEXT year.  Most barrels were about half full from the sounds of the howling and hissing as I walked by.  Now and then they get a shake or a beer bottle is broken against them, in order to “keep the cats in the spirit of things” according to a cigarette smoking 3rd grader named Malakai who was kind enough to educate me on the particulars.  It’s bad, but I actually think it could be much worse.  I’m not going to judge anyone for this.  So a cat spends a little time in a barrel.  They’ll all have homes tonight.  These people are just having some harmless fun.  Just the same, I think I’m heading back towards The Kahler Trailer.  More updates from there.

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