Dead Cat

Dear cat owner-

If I ever catch your cat in my garage again I will kill it. I may come kill you too, or at least I will sue you. Yesterday when it was so unseasonably warm and sunny, I had just finished washing my Volvo, and I put it away in the garage. While I was putting the supplies away, my wife came home and I helped her get our daughter out of the car and in the house.

When I came back to the garage minutes later, your dirty cat was sitting on the hood of my Volvo. It had left footprints on the hood, and dirt had fallen off of the cat onto my car. I would have thrown something at the cat, except it was on my car and I didn’t want to further sully my car that your cat had just dirtied. Seeing your cat on my car caused a rage to surface in me that I’ve been working for years to reduce.

Nearly ten years ago, when I lived in a different state, I pulled my then-new Saab coupe into the garage of my home on a warm summer evening, leaving the windows open. I went into the house without closing the garage door. I came out later that evening to go to the store, and I climbed into my beautiful Saab and drove away into the warm, dusky evening with the windows still open and the radio playing. Upon arriving at my destination, I rolled up the windows, locked the car, and shopped.

When I returned to my car a few minutes later and climbed in, I instantly smelled cat urine. I searched the car for a cat, but none was found. When I returned home in my reeking car, I saw a cat standing in our garage. It quickly ran out when I drove up.

As I inspected my car in the light of the garage, I was distraught to discover that the cat had climbed up on the hood of my car, and in through the open driver’s window. It left paw prints on the driver’s seat before standing in the driver’s footwell of the car and pissing on the carpet, pedals, floor mat, and footwell’s center console. I ended up disassembling the center console, lower dash and lifting the carpet to use “pet odor” cleaning solutions on the carpet. I hand-washed all of the interior plastic parts in the kitchen sink.

If I had ever seen that cat again, or if I had found out whose cat that was, I would have gotten sweet revenge. For good or bad, that never happened. Perhaps it would have been cathartic. Perhaps it would have been pathetic.

Ever since, I’ve never left my car parked with the windows or sun-roof open far enough that cats could get into the car. I don’t like to leave the garage door open for any length of time. I’m neurotic about it. So the fact that your stinking, dirty cat was in my garage sitting on my freshly-washed car last night absolutely crossed the line. Consider yourself warned.