So You Think You Wanna Be A Pet Sitter?

It's midnight on a Saturday night. In January. In New York. It's cold. But not quite cold enough to be snowing, so instead, it is raining. Nasty, miserable night. On top of that, I've had a cold all week, my nose is running and sore from all the kleenex, I've had a dry hacking cough for days, haven't slept in three nights, my throat is killing me, and all the coughing has even given me a pounding head ache. And yet, I just got home from work. Taking care of three cats at one house this weekend. Owner says, "They were feral, they LOOOOVE to be outside. It's going to be nice over the weekend, so put them outside when you come on Saturday, they can stay out there all night" This is, of course, against my better judgement, and I try to dissuade him from this idea but he is insistent that it will be fine. Right.

3pm this afternoon, I'd been waiting all day for it to get "nice". This has not happened; the Weatherman was incorrect. Finally went to check on the cats, who were INSIDE. Safe. Warm. Happy. Well, the black one DID want to go out. So I open the back door to the deck, and seemingly all he wants to do was just sit right outside the door and look around. "Cool", I think, "I'll leave the door open and let him come back in on his own in a few minutes". Then the other two amble upstairs, slink past me (because, remember, they were FERAL and are basically afraid of humans - this is important for later reading) and out the open door they go. I don't panic, this is, after all, what the owner had specifically TOLD me he wanted.

Half hour later, the three cats do not want to come in, and won't come near me or the door. I look at the sky and think: SNOW??!!! I let out a sigh and shrug to myself, "He said they'd be fine, they do it all the time, they are HAPPY out there". He's actually set up a couple of little cat dog-houses for them. I leave a bowl of wet food, a bowl of dry and a bowl of water for them on the deck just outside the door and go on my way.

8pm, I am at a friend's house, we are both sick. Misery loves company. I've gone through a half a box of kleenex on my own. We give up on the Republican debate in abject disgust and watch a movie instead. Her dog needs to go out, I volunteer to pop him out the back door. He's at LEAST 16, mostly blind, mostly deaf, and generally pretty disoriented, but he got HIS little tush right back inside pronto because when he got outside IT WAS RAINING.

THE CATS ARE STILL OUTSIDE.

11pm: The movie was pretty good, it's time for me to go home and go to bed. And I remember the cats. Do I go back up to the house to let them in? The owner said they'd be fine, not to worry. He also thought the weather would be nice. I drive back up to the house.

I go to the sliding door off the kitchen that leads to the deck, and I can see in the light shining through the door from the kitchen, a furry creature on the other side. I slide the door open and RIGHT on the other side of the door is what I initially take to be the Gray Tiger Striped cat at the food bowl chowing down - "Lola" is her name. Except then I look over her back and see THREE CAT Faces staring at me. Just as "Lola" is about to WALK IN THE DOOR I'm holding open for her, I realize LOLA is actually named "Rocky" - as in RACCOON. STANDING ON MY FOOT LOOKING UP AT ME AS IF TO SAY, "Hey, what else ya' GOT in there, can I come in and look?" I slam the door shut on Rocky, and the cats sit and watch. They are mocking me; they think this is hilarious. Rocky goes back to eating their food, effectively prohibiting them from getting around him and to the door to come inside, which all three clearly want to now do.

I make a lot of noise and wait to see if Rocky will disappear into the dark. I sit on the couch reading a Crate & Barrel catalog while I watch the door in front of me with one eye fixed on the darkness just beyond the glass. Finally it seems Rocky is gone; I venture outside and grab up the bowls. HA! No more free Friskies for YOU my friend! But now...where are the CATS? They are gone! Gone gone gone! I slide the screen door shut on this cold night, and leave the inside door open. I loudly open a can of cat food. Nothin'. I stand at the door shaking their dry food container. Nothin'. I call "Here kitty kitty kitty" a hundred times with my sore and aching throat, nothin'. I sit down for a half an hour, waiting for them to come back to the door, now that the Raccoon is gone. The screen door is shut, but through it I can hear the horrible shrill trill-chatter of a Raccoon having a temper tantrum - or a fight. I cringe, I wince, oh God, is it fighting with another Raccoon - or a CAT? I listen desperately for any sounds of a cat growling, yowling, snarling, hissing, all the while having visions of a lawn strewn with clumps of fur and bloody kitty entrails in the morning. I wring my hands, "I KNEW I shouldn't have let them out! HEEEEERRRE KITTY KITTY KITTY!" They do not come.

Finally I give up. As I leave through the garage to go to my car and home to my bed and my Vicks Vapo-Rub, who is sitting on the FRONT STEPS, huddled under the front door awning but ALL THREE CATS. I try to get them to come into the garage and thus into the house, but they are afraid of me and won't come. I go this way, they go that way, I open the front door, they run down the steps to the garage but won't go in, I go to garage to shoo them up steps and into the open front door, they take to the bushes. I can't see them; they've all scattered. I'm pretty sure I heard them laughing as they went off into the darkness. Ten minutes of running around the dark, wet, slippery front yard, sliding on a grassy hill that still has ice on it, trying to get them to go in EITHER one of the open doors, they disappear, I run to the back door, they are not there...and finally, I totally give up on the cats. I have had enough. Truly.

It's 12:30 now, it's still raining, it's still cold. They are still outside. I am not.

Moral of the story: This job is NOT always a bag of jellybeans
Moral of the story 2: Listen to your own instincts over not-so-good suggestions by the client.
Moral of the story 3: NEVER let cats outside when you are pet sitting.