Cats Can Be So...So...CATTY!

Farmer H is not pleased with our felines.

They have eaten all the fish out of his fish pond. Not a real fish pond. A plastic fish pond with a pump, and a landscaped little area he made with flat creek rocks and not-cheap lava rocks, and a tiny wrought iron Mr. and Mrs. Frog sitting on a bench, and a ceramic turtle, and a completely out-of-place miniature bear on a log ceramic figurine.

Farmer H started growing his Devil's Playground goldfish when the #1 son was in preschool. He won a fish at the school carnival, and that blasted thing refused to die. Two years we fed and housed it. While it got bigger every day. Went through three fishbowls. Then Farmer H said he wanted it to live outside. So he bought Devil's Fish Pond 1.0, a fake granite block plastic rectangle. He also invested in a few goldfish now and then. A year or two later, he graduated to an asymmetric curved kidney shape in black plastic. It does not look as hideous as it sounds. But it IS empty. Now.

In its heyday, the Farmer H Fish Refuge was teeming with 10 to 14 big 'uns. At least six inches long. Some a foot. I don't know when the cats became master anglers. It has to have been within the last year. Because I remember watching Farmer H feed the fish. How they thrashed for the pellets of food.

The cats liked the pellets of fish food, too. They would "accidentally" knock the canister off the garden bench on the side porch by the garage. And of course they cleaned up the mess of pellets with their tongues. When Farmer H foiled their little scam, they would sit beside the fish pond, and scoop wet pellets over to the edge with their paws. Masterminds, they were. One probably snagged a fish on accident, and then rode an accelerated learning curve like Caesar the chimp in Rise of Planet of the Apes.

Farmer H is thinking of restocking. The cats are biding their time.