Fun With Alley Cats

When I was living in russia we were always afraid of the alley cats, since they were as big as dogs, and much more fierce. One day we (my roommate and I) found a wounded baby dragon under a bush near our apartment, and we tried to nurse it back to health. It had fleas tucked up under its scales so we gave it a long hot bath to kill them. Worked like a charm, except that dragons aren't to fond of water, so he lashed about and spurted flames. But other than a few scratches and some burnt holes in the shower curtain we were fine.

But then we started thinking, "Boy dragons sure hate water," which lead to "What's the one thing that hates water more than dragons? And the one thing fiercer than a dragon?" That's right, Alley cats. One thing leading to another, my roommate soon was bound by a fifty ruble bet to bathe an alley cat (Actually, part of the bet was that he had to shampoo it), and the next thing you know, we're filling up the tub with water. We set up one of those stick holding up a box traps, with a little dish of sour cream under it, and pretty soon we had an alley cat in our bath tub. Now, we hadn't thought this out too well, and the cat was so violent we absolutely could not get anywhere near him! The water was too deep for him to jump out, but even after abandoning the idea of shampooing him, we had no idea how to get it out of the tub with our arms intact. So the only thing we could think to do was catch a few more alley cats, and throw them in too.

That actually just made the problem worse, and after a while we knew we needed to do something. So my roommate lured the cats over to the opposite end of the tub, and I unplugged the drain, then we both ran and hid, while waiting for the water to get low enough for the cats to jump out. We had opened up all the doors leading out of the house, and barricaded every other exit. We had forgot one though--the rat hole in our kitchen, which was between the bathroom and the exit. Sure enough, one after another the cats ran right inside.

This was just after we had gotten rid of our rat problem (another great story) so it was really frustrating to have larger louder animals in our walls. But it was fun telling people we had cats, and saying it like a problem, which seemed to confuse them.