Weekly Thread: When Animals Invade

My murderous cat, plus your stories

I’ve written about this before, how in dark times, the uncomplicated love of animals can just be the best thing to hold onto. Which is how, I ended up adopting two pandemic dogs. And I also have a cat named Waffles. I’ve talked about my dogs often (here is a story about dog shit everywhere), but not much about Waffles. Waffles lives an in between life. He is liminal. He’s both enormously patient with the kids who pick him up and carrying him around. But he’s also violent. Thanks to a back door that was broken down by Dolly, my wolf dog, for most of the summer Waffles was able to escape the house often and came back with a cut on his nose or a dead mouse. He’s fond of bringing me animals. Laying dead mice under the kitchen table or on the porch. He’s also notorious for bringing in live chipmunks and letting them go free. This May, I once woke up to bird feathers all over the house (that was when Dolly learned how to open the sliding glass door), but I never found the body.

Last summer, Waffles released what I thought was one chipmunk into the house. But after I set a live trap, I caught not one, but two chipmunks. He brought another one into the house in August and I still haven’t caught it. Waffles is the Butcher of Cedar Rapids.