Animals Are Not My Strong Point - Round 2

I have a new friend. And by friend, I mean literally nothing which is usually associated with the word "friend," and exactly the opposite in most cases. His name is Axl. And he's a cat. I know in my previous post of the same title, I said a few things which may or may not have been highly biased in favor of cats being my favorite of the typical domestic pets. Dog lovers can sit back and enjoy though, because none of that applies to this particular cat.

In case you haven't figured it out or are curious or whatever, I didn't just name the cat Axl because it seemed like a good cat name. You see, Axl has decided he lives on my back porch and in the bushes or by the air conditioning unit by my bedroom window. He has also decided that he is a dog. What makes me say this? Because Axl howls.

When I first heard him howl, I was in the middle of a pitched League of Legends match with my headphones on. The volume was cranked up high, and I had the sounds of teamfights and friends on Skype blasting through them. I suddenly had to return to the summoner platform and take my headphones off because I heard what I could only describe as a rape attempt happening outside my window. Turns out it was just one very obnoxious cat, making a sound that I had never heard a cat make before. Now, way back when they were still a thing, Guns and Roses did a cover of "Live and Let Die," which is a song that was never intended to be sung by the voice of Axl Rose. And that's what the cat sounded like. Only a few octaves higher. And it was bad. I could only imagine what was causing the little nuisance to produce sounds like that, but enough of the answers I came up with were accompanied by horrifying mental images that I decided not to check. Instead I went back to my game, figuring he would eventually stop.

But he never did. And this went on for hours. And it became a recurring event.

Every morning at between 2 and 5 AM, this damned cat has carved time out of his busy schedule of raiding trash cans, collecting intestinal worms and earmites, licking his butt or belonging to some extremely unfortunate owner to come sit outside my window and wail.

Another unfortunate fact about it is that the local human population evidently isn't the only group who's got a beef with him. He's been in a number of fights with God knows what kinds of other animals out there, and I'm fairly sure he's decided that my back patio is his own personal MMA ring. And he loses every fight. He's like that annoying kid from middle school who thought he had to prove how tough he was by getting into fights, but always got his ass kicked. Except Axl just wants to make irritating noises.

Now, I do love cats. I am a cat person in every way, but my affection for them only goes so far. And when I'm repeatedly awakened by what sounds like the tortured shrieks of the eternally damned, there is only a thin layer of sleep deprivation and common sense between that cat and a date with the longsword hanging from my wall. As irritating as it is, I have no real intention of dealing with him on my own just yet. It depends on how long it takes for him to catch me on a bad night. I just hope for his sake that he finds a new gig to play or management removes him. Preferably before he decides to ruin "Sweet Child O' Mine" or challenge a pissed off raccoon to death combat on my porch.

This just seems to be par for the course as far as the local animal population is concerned here in Huntsville. I don't think I've met a single local animal that was any kind of normal. I'm fairly sure the only reason we're allowed to use the Sam Houston campus is because the Squirrel Mafia allows it. The squirrels around campus are some of the most massive squirrels I have ever seen. Some of them look downright prehistoric. If you were to leave an acorn on an industrial strength rat trap, a campus squirrel would probably look you dead in the eyes and set it off with his foot, lick the wound once without breaking eye contact, and then walk away with his acorn while giving you the finger over his shoulder. The other day I was walking home from class and one was sitting on the sidewalk in front of me, so I tried to make it leave by starting at it like I was going to chase it. Instead of leaving, it just turned around and gave me this "Come at me, bro" look with his beady little eyes and I decided to walk the other way.

Oddly enough though, it seems that the level of intelligence, size and intimidating, creepily organized behavior dissipates rapidly the further away from campus you get. In fact, they go from escaped NIMH experiments to suicidal street jockeys in a matter of yards from the main campus. However, that's likely due to the Jurassic campus squirrels' reluctance to impede on the territory of the grackles.

Most of the birds in the area are pretty normal. The blue jays and mocking birds and the like are fairly average, but the grackles are an entirely different story. While no grackle is ever going to win any beauty contests, it seems to me that the grackles around here are a disturbing new level of grotesque. Every single one of them looks like it's been hit by more than one car and then got up and promptly lost a knife fight with a band of greaser alley cats and a weed whacker. Every single one of them is missing large chunks of feathers from their wings and tails. I'm fairly sure that only half of them fly the way nature intended, while the rest get airborne using the dark powers of the Necronomicon and gravity's own fear of telling them otherwise.

Additionally, when I look at the eyes of any other bird, I just see nothing but simple, single-minded creature intelligence. When I look into the eyes of the grackles, however, I see nothing but a dark, loathing hatred that pierces my soul. I once had one of these Hitchcock nightmares glare at me through those dead, zombie bird eyes for a full three minutes while I tried to get around him because he was absolutely convinced that I was going to steal his waffle fry. I'm not even sure where he got it from, considering how far we were from the campus Chic-fil-a, so I can only assume that he stole it from his latest victim. I probably would have stumbled on some bits of bone and clothing had I poked around in the bushes he was perched in front of.

So all in all, there are worse animal threats to be concerned over than Axl. Actually, come to think of it, I didn't hear Axl last night. I can only assume that he either left on his own, or he was captured and sacrificed by the parking lot grackles in a cemetery somewhere. No way to know for sure.

-The Sarcastic Soul-