Early in 2023, I realized, due to occasional thumping just after dark,
that I had some sort of animal living in the wall of my home office. I wanted
to capture it, but I had loaned my medium size cage trap to a Korean family,
and it had not been returned. I ordered a new one. Soon after it arrived,
the Koreans returned the old one, of course.
My first suspicion was raccoon. I put the trap under the house, baited
with marshmallows, a preferred raccoon bait with the added feature that it
doesn't attract cats. Days later, it was still baited, and a couple of
marshmallows I had put out in front of it as free samples were still there.
I decided to bait the trap with cooked chicken wings, reputed to catch
everything but rats (they are vegetarian). I didn't have any, and forgot to
get any, so the trap was still left with the marshmallows.
some days later, I heard the thumping in the wall, then a bit later went
out into the kitchen. There I heard very loud meowing. I went out the
side door to investigate, and meowed back. Then I realized there was a cat
in my trap. Curiosity had caged the cat - he'd just gone in to check it
out.
I pulled out the trap, and in it was a gorgeous cat. Light cream face,
darker cream body with overlapping medium brown and dark brown splotches,
and very well groomed. I thought for awhile what to do, then figured the
path of least resistance was to let it out, which I did. He ran away at
amazing speed.
I had started to block the entrance to under the house, but decided,
since we sometimes have rats around here, that perhaps a night prowling
cat was a good idea, and he wasn't causing any trouble in the wall. His
thumping was never more than a few seconds in the evening. He was back in
the wall before midnight.
We had some very heavy rains when a cat couldn't go out and hunt, so I
started leaving him some cat food, which I continued to do after the rain.
I had been assured that feeding a cat does not reduce its predatory
instincts.
Wally obviously wanted to be a wild cat, and had no interest whatever
in being a house cat - but in the early morning hours of April 27, 2023, he
apparently suffered the consequences. Nature can be very harsh.
At 3:10 in the morning I heard commotion under the house near my office.
Then I heard a loud panicked scream from a cat, actually, one and
a half screams. It sounded like a cat being crushed. Then there was silence.
It was obvious to me that a larger predator had gone under the house and
killed Wally Wallcat.
I got up, went out, and shined a powerful flashlight beam under the
house. I could see nothing due to boxes in the way. I left the cat's food
bowl filled, and three days later it was still untouched.
So I wrote this obituary for Wally Wallcat.
Sunday evening I was at my computer station in the office, when I heard,
just after darkness had fallen, thumping in the wall, for just a few seconds
as usual. I went out and saw that the food bowl was empty, so I refilled it.
Monday morning it was empty again.
Wally Wallcat was back! So what actually happened that night? I haven't
a clue.
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