Intruder Kitty must GO!

Okay, I've been patient through the long winter. My house is Cat Pee Central. Miffy is a nervous wreck who pees on everything she sees. She's too scared to venture through the cat flap, and has made a pooing place behind one of the armchairs in the loungeroom (coincidentally next to – but not IN - the litter tray I was inspired to install there when she decided it was a safe and private peeing place. Omigod, my carpet will have to go... )

Oscar bin Laden is Intruder Kitty's best friend, apparently. He sat on the window sill one afternoon, blithely watching IK saunter past him up the back steps, in through the cat flap, back out through the cat flap in rather a hurry, and back down the steps, closely followed by Cranky Betty.

But my patience is at an end. A nasty, sleepless end.

There are no limits to the audacity of Intruder Kitty. He has begun toying with me – he has made me his mouse. He has more front than Dolly Parton, and I am over it.

After a 3am wake-up and a long day at school, followed by a long parent-teacher evening yesterday, I was falling over with tiredness by 9pm, and fast asleep by 9.30.

At 2.24am I was woken by the marauding monstrosity. It thundered through the cat flap, yowled loudly three times – a feline equivalent of “Nyah nyah, you can't catch me!” - and then thundered back out through the cat flap, to disappear into the night.

So much for my lovely deep sleep. My brain started ticking, whirring even – and I snatched a few brief moments of broken sleep filled with weird and tiring dreams that revolved around parent-teacher interviews and badly-behaved students, storms and wild weather, and a kindly giant. And then my alarm went off. Yay for caffeine – it's the only thing holding my eyes open, and I'm teaching a full day today with a playground duty chucked in just for fun – and tutoring after school.

Intruder Kitty is TOAST. Or at least, he will be if I can ever catch him.

The Ballad of Intruder Kitty

In a suburb of Canberra there's a chilly little house

Full of Betty and her family and a sometimes midnight mouse

The heating's really basic, nothing central, nothing ducted

And in a place like Canberra that's pretty bloody fuckeded.

It's messy and it's freezing and it has a tiny telly

And recently it's started to become a little smelly

The cause of the aroma (I confess it is a pity)

Is a fluffy Oscar lookalike who's called Intruder Kitty.

I don't know where he comes from and I don't know where he goes

But every time he visits us, my house is on the nose.

He sneaks in through the cat flap at odd hours of night and day

And steals the food from Betty's cats, then slyly sneaks away.

This fluffy little felon, this feline furry thief

Takes great delight in purloining their chicken and their beef

He gobbles all their bickies up, then leaves without a trace,

This bold Intruder Kitty is the scourge of Betty's place.

The thought of an intruder has made Oscar rather cross

He's gone all territorial to prove that he's the boss

But spraying all around the house has been to no avail

It hasn't stopped Intruder Cat, (but it has made Betty pale).

So clever vengeful Oscar did devise a cunning plot

To scare Intruder Kitty without fighting him a lot.

And poor unwitting Betty was a pawn in Oscar's scheme

Which involved the bathroom heater, and which turned poor Betty green.

Now, Canberra is chilly as I've told you all before

So there's a little heater that's on Betty's bathroom floor.

It makes the mornings bearable when temperatures are low

And to this very heater Oscar EvilCat did go.

He lifted up a fluffy leg and sprayed the heater well

So when poor Betty switched it on it amplified the smell

The pong of fan-forced Oscar piss is really rather whiffy

So Betty ran out screaming, closely followed by poor Miffy.

If you look closely you can see where Brave Sir Oscar sprayed all over my heater

Oh Oscar dear, your efforts to protect us are commended

But killing off my heater wasn't quite what you intended

Intruder Kitty wasn't fazed and came right back last night

And I'm now fifty bucks worse off, you dopey little shite.

Having said that, the new heater (placed up high, beyond the reach of territorial sprayings), puts out quite a decent amount of heat. The problem of Intruder Kitty, however, remains. Gas Mask, anyone?