The Cat Burglar

Besides the fact that we're pretty sure someone was in our backyard in the wee early hours of the morning (seriously, the gate was open when we woke up and I know I heard something, twice, at some point last night, but I was too tired to wake up Jamie, I guess I value sleep more than safety), we had a visit from the Cat Burglar yesterday afternoon.

Yes, twice while we had the front door open (and the screen door closed) yesterday I noticed Pablo in our house.

Pablo is our upstairs neighbor's cat and he loves us. Whenever we are outside he's playing with us or sitting in one of our laps. He's very sweet. But he's not allowed in our house. Our neighbor has a cat door so Pablo can go inside whenever he wants, but I guess he likes us more because we are new and interesting and we pet him whenever he wants.

When we first closed the screen door Pablo sat at the other side of it watching me watching TV. It made me a little sad for not allowing him inside, but he would get over it. Then I remembered that the bottom corner of the screen wasn't really attached to the screen door so it would be very easy for Pablo to walk right through it, if he figured it out. I know he's a smart cat, but I decided he wasn't that smart.

Then, as I was sitting on the couch balancing my check book I heard a noise, and then another noise and I looked up and Pablo was in my living room watching me. So after chasing him around for a minute (more playfully than seriously) I put him back out. I told Jamie that we needed to do something about the screen because otherwise Pablo would just keep breaking in. But Jamie disagreed. Anyway, a few minutes later we're both in the kitchen and I look over and there's Pablo, halfway into the bathroom. There's no telling how long he was in the house, but he was inside again.

So, again, we kicked him out (lovely carried him outside and placed him gently into a chair all while kissing him and singing his praises - we spoil him with love and affection).

How to prevent Pablo from continuing to break through our screen? Well, block it of course with a giant die.

As you can see from the pic, it worked.

Tonight I'm going to use the die to put in front of the gate to keep the people out of our backyard.

P.S. That's a cat burglar mask I tried to draw on Pablo. Usually they're black a la the Hamburglar, but since Pablo is black a black mask wouldn't show up as well.