Last Updated on January 25, 2019 by Terry
Good Friday friends. Last week we discussed shooting accidents. I retold three misadventures of my friends and myself. I told you about a bullet hole in the top of truck cab, JB getting shot while hunting, and a fellow that had to shoot the lock off of his truck in order to retrieve his jack to change a flat.
Well, now the fourth accidental shooting adventure. We’ll call it the CCSA.
Let’s get one thing perfectly clear, Carla was not in the car when I blasted it with my shotgun. I wasn’t even mad at her when it happened. She was the one that was mad. Come to find out, if you drive around with a bunch of bullet holes in your door, it makes you mad at the person who caused the bullet holes in your door.
Star date early 1983. We were married in the fall of 1979. We had recently purchased our first new car. Carla was driving a 1977 Camaro when we had gotten serious. We went and traded it in on a bright silver Toyota. She really liked it. At this time in history, we were living out at Carla’s old home place. We had almost finished constructing our house on Rocky Lane, so we needed a temporary place to live.
The house had a front porch that was about eight feet deep and sixteen feet wide. If you were behind the house, and walked up the east side, you could see across the front yard as you came from the front of the house, looking through the open corner of porch area. You were actually looking at her car as she parked right in front of the steps to the porch which led to the front door.
Recently someone had dropped off a medium sized cat in front of our house. She was scared and hungry so we took care of her. We set out some bowls on the back porch so she could eat and drink and be happy. She stayed close to the house all the time. Anytime we went outside, there she was. She had it made. And we were a happy family.
After about two weeks of happy, something changed. She had some sort of biological change come upon her. She began acting a little weird, kind of nervous. She began making strange gurgling noises. It was getting to be funny, right up to the point where every tom cat within seven tenths of a mile showed up at our house.
The fun suddenly stopped. Sleeplessness set in. The many noises that fired up tom cats make can be deafening. It sounds like something from a horror movie. Every time I jumped from bed and shooed them away, they were back by the time I got back in bed. They would not be denied.
To the best of my math abilities, I have counted as many as 14 cats on the front and back porches during this week-long event. I reached my breaking point by day three. I was motivated to action. I emptied the lead shot of a few shot gun shells and refilled them with broken macaroni and salt.
I didn’t want to kill the cats, but I wanted them to get burned a little and leave. It did not work. Macaroni and salt simply do not travel very far. I must have shot at about five cats before I realized this plan of action was futile.
By day four, I decided on a more aggressive idea. I would leave about a dozen of the lead shot in the shell with the mac and salt mixture. “That will give them a good burn,” I thought.
So, that night, as expected, they were back. I was really concentrating on the biggest one. He was a kind of black and gray mix. He was obviously taller than the other offenders.
I waited for the perfect moment. He was sitting on the edge of the front porch, on the open side. I eased out the back door and began my stalk toward the front. It was pitch black on the east side of the house. The light was on at the front. “I got him,” I thought as I smiled. I eased the gun up and fired.
Two things happened.
First: I forgot how good a big cat can see in the dark. He was watching me during my entire stalk. He leaped as I fired, so I missed.
Second: Did I mention that Carla parked in front of the porch? Yeah, I suddenly remembered this fact and realized that I did not miss. There were now thirteen tiny little holes in the front door of her car. I walked over and opened the door.
You could hear them rattling around inside the door as you opened and closed it. So much for hoping she would not notice the little holes.
I have decided to not disclose the entire conversation the next morning. Let’s just say that she was not happy. Within a couple of days, the CCSA was over and things were back to normal. (Well, it was really over a week later when we got the door repaired and painted.)
CCSA? The Community Cat Sexual Adventure of course.
Thanks for your time. Talk to you next Friday.
