Alley CAT lives up to her name...

Alley Cat

I can't believe I am posting this. Part of me is horrified and the other part is excited we've finally found a useful outlet for Alley's hunting instinct.

Sometime last week something dug a hole under the cement slab in the dog run and moved in under there. The foundation of the house goes down pretty far into the ground, so we weren't too concerned with the whatever-it-was getting into our physical home. Still, it wasn't ideal to have something living under the patio in the dog run, because…well, ew. Plus, the longer it lived under there, the more likely that it would eventually figure out how to get in the crawl space under the house, and I’m just not cool with that. I am an animal lover by nature, but I have boundaries. My house is one of them.

Cut to Alley: the dog became absolutely obsessed with digging whatever it was up. She started spending most of her evenings in the dog run (in addition to her days), and had to be convinced to come inside when it was time for bed.

To call Alley a motivated hunter is a gross understatement. She would lie in the middle of the dog run completely motionless FOR HOURS waiting for the thing living under the patio to finally emerge. And then there were the holes she dug in an effort to flush the thing out of its den. This did nothing for my already sun torched landscaping.

Of course, the pest control people couldn’t come out on a weekend, so we were left dealing with all this “dog versus vermin” hole-y nightmare over the weekend.

But I guess Alley’s persistence paid off, because we found the murdered body of a mouse in the dog run Sunday morning. And then, as the afternoon wore on, she killed several of its offspring. I guess it either gave birth under there [insert shudder here] or moved her young from another location. Either way, the babies were too young to survive on their own, and easy targets for Alley as they wandered out from underneath the patio looking for their mother.

(Okay, okay. They were really all rats. I know we live in a big city and rats are always found in and around large groups of people regardless of the neighborhood, but still. NASTY.)

(I still feel kind of bad for the babies. I was out in the dog run when she killed one, and heard its terrified little death squeaks. It brought tears to my eyes. My only consolation is that Alley was quick about it, so it didn’t have to suffer for long.)

In an effort to keep any of the mama rat’s friends or family from also seeking shelter under the patio, Trevor and I spent a significant part of the late afternoon on Sunday digging around and burying brinks under the slab to discourage other vermin from burrowing under and repeating The Great September Rat Slaughter of 2011.

So far, it has worked and there is no longer any evidence of something residing under there. Even Alley doesn’t seem to give the area a second thought anymore, which is a good sign that we are now rid of the problem.

And, just think: I didn’t even need to buy a cat!