Cat Shadows

Ruwais is a town with many feral cats. You hear them yowling all of the time, you see them tipping over trash cans and, I've suspected, one ripped a hole in our screen door. Don't get me wrong, I like cats better than dogs for the most part, but they're everywhere. 

Our villa came without the general maintenance usually done before a new family moves in. It's an old house, built sometime in the 80's, and has had many families before ours. Because of this we are used to issues with the water, paint peeling off of the walls and a very difficult to manage screen and door to the back patio.

When a gash appeared in the bottom corner of the screen we knew we'd have to be careful when it was in place or the cats would waltz right in the house in search of food. (Yes, they do.) Then, the difficult-to-manage door quit functioning: it would close almost all the way, but left a 3-4 inch gap. So we closed it and the screen as much as possible when getting the downstairs ready for the night.

This particular night, Ben went to bed early because he wasn't feeling well, and as soon as he and the kids were fast asleep I looked out the bedroom door and a shadow slinked from the stairs towards the rooms... A cat! I screamed at it and it zipped back downstairs and squeezed out the door before I could get down there. I put a cookie sheet between the screen and the door to block the hole, shut the downstairs doors and hoped that would block the crazy creatures.

Maintenance takes a while to get around to anything, so for now a baby gate between the screen and the door closes the hole and all the downstairs doors closed contains it.

In Guatemala the constant dogs and firecrackers were sleep hazards and here, it's the cats! Hopefully, now, they'll stay outside sleep hazards.