Cats!!?

I am not a fan of cats. In my experience, cats are sneaky if not downright mean. You can't guess what's going on in their heads like you can with dogs. For example, when I look at Mabel at any given moment, I can tell you exactly what she's thinking. Granted, though she has quite a large head, I don't know that her brain is technically filling up all of that space. Her typical thoughts include: "I wish 'mom or dad' would let me sit in their lap; I am hungry; I am tired; I wish that bee would stop buzzing around my face...OUCH!; and, Who is this friend pulling up in the driveway?"

But enough about Mabel's thoughts...back to cats. So, we have a HORRIBLE mouse problem, and after seemingly endless attempts at outsmarting them with traps, poisons, and high tech gizmos, we decided that we needed a cat to help us out. Being the Craigslist fanatic that I am, I posted a want ad on Craigslist for a "barn cat." Within an hour, I had ten emails from people trying to get rid of their unwanted cats, confirming my feeling that cats suck. One lady, I'll call her "crazy cat lady," actually brought two of her cats out here in her 1985 Buick all the way from Carollton, which is about an hour away. She must have really wanted to get rid of them.

Umm. They are pretty mean. They might look cute and innocent in the picture, but if you walk within about 6 feet of them, they literally go beserk and hiss and jump around like they want to claw your eyes out. What a lovely addition to the farm. When I went outside this morning, they had disappeared, having magically escaped from the makeshift jail we were using for them to "adjust" to their new home. Turns out they've decided to hunker down in the chicken coop, much to the ladies' horror. When we went in to collect the eggs tonight, both cats were in the coop, and the chickens refused to come inside. We decided it was not a battle worth fighting tonight, so for now the cats are ruling the roost, so to speak.