Ants and a Dead Bird

Somehow, this summer I picked up two cat sitting jobs. The first is for a cat named Leon. Leon is old (20 human years), and since his owners are out of state a lot, I watch him a lot. Over the summer I would guess that I have taken care of him for about 2 months. It has been a perfect side job and I have loved it. The second job (this cat’s name is Charlie) is just a short two week gig while Charlie’s owner is on vacation. Leon’s house is not super close to my house, but it is close to my other job so it works out well. Charlie lives in my neighborhood, so I can just walk over there.

This week both jobs overlapped. Since it is simple to cat sit, I didn’t think this would be a problem. Then yesterday rolled around.

I went to take care of Leon first. I got there in the late afternoon, watered the garden, brought in the mail, etc. Then I went to get Leon’s old food bowl so that I could get him new food for the day. His food bowl is in the kitchen, and when I walked over to pick it up I realized that the bottom of the white bowl was completely black, covered in ants. I stepped back looked around, and saw a line of ants, weaving its way from the closed back door, around the rug, through the dining room, towards the food dish. Seriously, thousands of ants, and there hadn’t been any ants the day before! We had ant problems in Brazil, but I have never seen such a huge number of ants in such a small space.

I threw the dish under scalding water and ran to the store to by ant spray. When I got back I locked poor Leon in a bedroom and went to work. It took a bit to get it all cleaned up, but finally there were no more ants to be found in the house (or at least in that area). I left feeling pretty good about the fact that I handled it so well.

I went home, finished my student teaching application (YAY!) and then headed over to Charlie’s house around 10:30 at night. I opened the front door, flipped on the light, and there, in the middle of the living room, was a dead bird and a cat looking awfully pleased with himself. I gagged. Charlie has no claws and only has a very, very small yard to run around in. How he caught the bird and dragged it through his tiny cat door is beyond me. I didn’t hesitate, I picked up my phone and called my dad.

While I was waiting for my dad I walked around looking for cleaning supplies and inspected the mess. As if the dead bird and blood spattered all over the hard wood floor hadn’t been enough, the feathers and blood scattered over the carpet in the master bedroom did me in.

Thank goodness my parents live close and my dad isn’t squeamish! He took care of the bird itself and the feathers while I began scrubbing the blood off the floor. As I was finishing with the floor, and my dad was putting away the vacuum we had this conversation:

Katie: Do birds carry diseases?

Dad: Yep

Katie: What kind?

Dad: West Nile . . . if the bird had been sick it probably would have been easier to catch.

Are you kidding me?!? And on the same day that the newspaper declared that West Nile had been found in our county! I am not assuming that the bird truly had West Nile, but I did make sure to clean up as well as possible, and then I washed my hands a billion times.

What are the chances that both of these would happen in the same day? I may need to seriously rethink the whole cat sitting thing :)