Stupid People

Argh! We’re surrounded by Stupid People.

No. 1 Stupe would be moi.

Left the house before dawn this morning, for the daily two+ miles through the neighborhood. Knowing the sun would be glaring in my eyes within twenty minutes, I took my favorite old pair of prescription shades and hooked one temple thingie over my T-shirt’s collar. After one turn around the park, I ran into my friend Harriett, and we proceeded further, yakking away.

So busy was I with talking I failed to notice when the glasses fell off my shirt and tumbled to the ground. Not until I walked in the front door did I realize I’d lost $200 worth of wire and plastic!!!!

Irreplaceable wire and plastic, we might add. No matter how much I beg and plead, I can not persuade a glasses dispenser to give me a new pair of glasses in this old Rx. They insist on using the new one, and not once in god only knows how many years has a current prescription been as strong or as effective as this pair. God damn it — officious bastards.

I’ve got one last pair in this old prescription — clear ones, not shades — that I use for night driving. When they’re hanging on my nose at night, I can see the road clear as a bell. My regular glasses in the current prescription? Really…I shouldn’t be driving with those on at night. It’s not a “night vision” problem; it’s a the goddamn prescription isn’t strong enough problem.

Oh well. Stupid me: now I’ve lost an indispensable tool that I won’t be able to replace.

Speaking of stupid, in the gray dawn hours I came upon the couple who take their great Dane to the park and let it run loose for an hour or so. Stopped to chat and pet the Dane — it’s much smarter than its humans, though they’re kindly and gentle creatures. As we were strolling toward the park, I mentioned, in a friendly way, that I had a German shepherd that hated dogs and would fake “friendly” until the other person’s dog would get within reach — and then she would rip into its neck.

This didn’t register.

“I couldn’t take Anna to the park because people would have their dogs off-leash and she would harm any dog that came up to us — that meant my poor dog never got to take walks at all.”

Dumb as posts: this didn’t register, either.

Later as I hike up the east side of the park I see the male dolt standing out in the open hollering. The dog is way the hell and gone over on the west side of the park — bear in mind that this plot of land is a full mile around.

He calls the dog.

He calls the dog.

He calls the dog.

He calls the dog.

He calls the dog…

The dog ignores him.

Eventually, after about eight or ten minutes of this nonsense, the dog starts to move vaguely in his general direction.

Over on the other side of the park, the female dolt is sitting at a park bench. She now takes it into her head to call the dog over to her.

She calls the dog.

She calls the dog.

She calls the dog.

She calls the dog.

She calls the dog.

She calls the dog.

She calls the dog…

So what they have there is a big, honking clown of a dog that does not come to call and that they allow to run off a quarter- to a half-mile away from them in a public park used by people who may be afraid of dogs, people who may dislike dogs, runners who look like prey to dogs, dogs that may be protective of their owners, and maybe even the occasional German shepherd that craves nothing more in life than to wag cheerfully to lure over the stray pets of morons who let their dogs run loose and RIP THEIR GODDAMN THROATS OUT!

You think I jest, don’t you?…

Having discovered the glasses were lost, I jumped on my bike and retraced my steps, to no avail. Over, again, on the east side of the park, I encounter the air-head who rides her bike with a big mug of coffee in one hand and a large energetic pit pull trotting along beside her. Off-leash, of course.

We see each other every day and say hello, so I ask if she’s spotted a pair of shades on the ground. She says she’ll keep an eye out for them. I stop to say hello to the dog, which, while not slaveringly chummy like the Dane is at least fairly mellow if unchallenged. For godsake…she doesn’t even have a collar on him!

What part of anything that scares this animal, like a car wreck nearby or a fire engine flying past or a German shepherd trying to remove his jugular vein, will cause him to run off does she not understand?

This dog probably could have held his own against Anna. Maybe. When she worked herself into a towering rage, she was something to behold. I don’t think I’d care to come up against her even if I were a pit bull.

Speaking of stupes, Other Daughter and her schizophrenic husband have a little tortoiseshell tabby that they dote on. They let this animal run loose in the neighborhood, being of the species of moron that imagines leaving the cat out is somehow good for the cat. Nevermind the pack of coyotes who’ve taken up residence. Nevermind the cars. Nevermind the delinquent across the street who thinks it’s fun to lay rubber on the block-long road in front of your house. Kitty must go out.

Welp, Kitty has moved in to my yard. She likes to sit on the wall around my front courtyard, and she marks the gates with plenty of spray. Pulling Cassie loose from that delicious stink-fest is quite a task, when it’s time to take her for a walk. Cassie loves cat stink. I could do without it.

But what I could especially do without is having this damn cat use my backyard as a toilet. The desert landscaping in back is crushed granite…approximately the texture of cat litter, which is exactly what Kitty thinks it is. Yesterday I’m sitting in back reading the paper over my morning coffee and what do I see but Cassie nosing up something and happily munching away on it.

Yup, you guessed it: cat shit.

Why do dogs like to eat cat shit? Why??????

WhateEVER…I don’t want it in my backyard.

So the question now arises: how to keep these morons’ cat out of my yard?

I suppose I could go up to the pound and get my own pit bull. Problem is, you can’t leave a dog outdoors in the heat here. Some people do, but that’s another variant on Stupid. It’s cruel to start with, and a fair way to shorten your dog’s life to end with.

As a practical matter, Anna the GerShep and Walt the Greyhound did a pretty fair job of keeping the cats out of the backyard, because they could go in and out at will through the gigantic dog door I carved in the back wall. Anna liked to go out and take the morning air now and again, thought she didn’t spend more than half-an-hour at a time in this hobby. That, apparently, was enough to discourage cats from taking up residence.

However, a pony-sized dog is not the only thing that can go in and out that dog door… Especially after the Garage Invasion episode, I would just as soon leave it bolted shut. Because Cassie won’t use a dog door, I’ve become accustomed to the old-fashioned way of serving the hound’s needs (pay attention and get up off your duff when the dog goes to the back door!). And I have no desire to change back to the Burglar Entry method.

Besides, why should I have to take on the expense and hassle of another dog because stupid people can’t take care of their cat responsibly?

No, you can’t trap a cat and take it to the pound. Well, you can. But what will happen is that if you try to leave it off there, they will charge you ninety-six bucks! The pound and the Humane Society here are so overrun with feral and stray cats that they don’t want people to bring them any more! So they hit you with a stiff gouge for turning in a stray cat.

The alternative is to trap the cat and take it up to Lake Pleasant and drown it, or simply to let it loose in the desert to be eaten by coyotes (not until it’s devastated some more of the native birds and small creatures, we might add — cats are hell on native wildlife). This activity, however, is illegal. It has been deemed animal cruelty. And the law will put you in jail for a good long time if they catch you dumping a cat.

And that brings us back to the question of how to keep these people’s cat out of my backyard.

I could resurrect the dragon’s teeth, strips of nails I tied up there to keep Son-in-Law from jumping the fence after the interlude in which he told Semi-Demi-Exboyfriend that he would come into my yard whenever he felt like it.

Hm. Now there was a time when the hassle and expense of owning a German shepherd was worth it. LOL! She caught him coming in the side gate. He never tried that again. 😀

The dragon’s teeth are very tacky. And really, I do not feel like drilling holes in 2-inch strips, pounding nails through them, and wiring them to the top of the wall. Like I don’t have enough to do with my time?

Satan and Proserpine, the house’s previous owners, bolted a strip of vine lattice along a short stretch of the west wall. I think they did it because they wanted some privacy, because they never planted vines there. And in fact, it does work to block the view from my neighbor Terri’s westside window. Which is moot, because she has heavy drapes that she never, EVER opens.

But the lattice has another effect: it blocks the cat from getting over the wall there. Too narrow for her to climb up on, and too high for her to jump over in a flying leap. I could, in theory, buy hundreds of feet of wooden lattice and bolt it to the block wall.

This would be a) expensive as hell and b) more hassle than the human mind can conceive.

Possibly the proposed pit bull would be cheaper and less of a nuisance…

I could super-glue broken glass to the top of the wall, in the Mexican mode.

This would be tacky, too, but possibly not as tacky as strips of nails. Also, during the SDXB-vs-Schizophrenic Son-in-Law adventure, I was advised that the police likely would look askance at a litter of broken glass along a wall, especially if an officer elected to jump the wall in pursuit of, say, a Garage Invader.

I could sprinkle mothballs on the tops of the walls. Unfortunately, these are toxic. If the cat knocked some on the ground (which it certainly would, because it jumps on the wall and walks around all the time), Cassie might get into them. Same effect when a breeze causes the paloverde or one of the other plants to brush across the top row of blocks.

Or I could wire or tie a layer of chicken wire along the top of the wall. That will be almost as pretty as the nail strips, eh?

Or maybe I could go out and buy several containers of cat repellent and sprinkle that atop and along the base of the wall. Reviews of such products look less than encouraging, though; 34 people panned the stuff at Amazon, vs. 21 who rated it great, sorta OK, or pretty much worthless. One reviewer suggested it would work well as a kitty snack.

Anyone who knows cats also knows that when you elect to do battle with one, the loser is going to be you.