…even when they aren’t my pets. My neighborhood has become inundated with feral cats. It’s not like I live out in the boonies or the sticks where there are lots of wide open spaces. It’s a normal community, older houses, mature trees. Just lots of cats. I think a neighbor moved out, left their outdoor cats to fend for themselves, and two years later we have 30-40 cats running around. But how can you not like these cute, sweet faces??

Well, I’ll tell you when they aren’t cute. When the tom cats start fighting at all hours of the day/night, when they spray your welcome mat and glass doors and when they start accosting the little female kitties.

And it’s also not cute when they find a way into the crawl space under your feet. The last straw was when I heard a cat fight, literally a foot away from me, but from underneath me. And my two (indoor only) cats were sitting right in front of me, snoozing. So it couldn’t have been them. I immediately went out and bought what I had been calling a hazmat suit, but really it was just a painters’ jumpsuit. I also bought a mask/hoodie thing to protect my hair. I had some cheap goggles and gloves from a Halloween costume that rounded out the ensemble.

Only thing left to do was to wait for a warm day to ensure the cats were out of the crawl space enjoying the sunny day. That day was today.

I donned my hazmat suit, hoodie, goggles, gloves and tied bags around my shoes. I was ready!

Here I am psyching myself up into crawling into the crawl space. I really, really didn’t want to do this, but knew the only way to confirm what was really going on down there, and to really know for sure none of them were still under there before I blocked the hole, was to just get down and dirty.

It reeked of cat pee, but actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. There was some insulation that had come down, but all in all was relatively clean, for a crawl space. I found one dried cat poopy and that was it. I did find one of the insulated vents hanging down, so I resecured it to the main vent. I’m guessing that was the metallic banging I was always hearing as well, they have actually been crawling around in the vents!

Having staked out the whole space and as satisfied as I could be at that point, I headed back out for some fresh air!

The hole is now completely blocked up, I’m just really hoping I was indeed able to scare all of the cats out, if there were any in there. I guess time will tell. If I hear any more noise, I’ll know something was trapped. If I don’t, then this dirty, smelly chore was a success!

Next on the list, Trap-Neuter-Release! I have 4 appointments in the next couple of months, I just hope I can actually catch them and fix them so they don’t keep repopulating the neighborhood!