Cat Rant

This is a natural gas fire pit with silica sand, a high purity, fine sand that’s also known as industrial sand. The sand covers a fire ring, and when I light it, blue flames come up through the sand and appear to be dancing just above the surface. This is not a giant litter box. The neighbor’s cat obviously doesn’t know the difference. Instead of staying in his back yard, he jumps an eight-foot wall each night to come into my garden. He does his business in my fire pit, and then howls under my bedroom windows at 3 a.m. He brings half-eaten birds into my garden and leaves them scattered here and there. He marks my flowerbeds, and even poops on my walkways. He does all this at night, and seldom shows up during the day. The few times I’ve seen him during the daytime, he quickly jumps back over the wall into his own back yard.

Today I cleaned the fire pit yet again, and this time I put some orange peels down to see if that would repel this nighttime visitor. If it doesn’t work, I’ve read of some other methods to try next to deal with errant cats. Maybe if he stops using the fire pit as a litter box, he won’t bother jumping the wall, and all the other problems with him will go away.

I normally don’t mind cats, but if I wanted one, I’d get one of my own. If this keeps up, I’m sending my neighbor a bill to replace the expensive silica sand!