We have cats. We have cats the same way we have mice, or might have any other vermin infest Our Humble O’Bode. The cats come prowling around our house at night, and I know that because he, she, they or it have been crapping in the planter next to our front stoop. I have quite a few ideas about ways to deal with this, but they all involve doing things to the cats that My Darling B would rather I didn’t do, even the plan to trap them live and take them to the pound. And that was the nicest thing I could think of.

No, actually the nicest thing I could think of was repelling them by stinking up the planter with coffee grounds, a suggestion I got from an internet message board after shooting my mouth off about what I’d really like to do. B suggested I find a way to repel them that didn’t involve acts of mayhem, so I googled the interwebs a bit and found that cats supposedly turned their noses up at coffee grounds. I’ve been saving coffee grounds every morning for the past two weeks and sprinkling them in the flower bed and, so far, no cat turds. Either cats really do hate the smell of coffee grounds or, for the past week they got to our house and didn’t need to poop. Or maybe somebody else got tired of them pooping in their yard, caught them in a noose, tied them up in a sack with a brick and threw them in the lake. Not that I’m saying that would be a good thing.

I like cats quite a lot. So does My Darling B. Two cats live with us at Our Humble O’Bode right now and we enjoy their company quite a lot even though one of them is a little bit on the snotty side and the other one’s so affectionate he’s almost puppyish about it, jumping up in our laps whenever we sit down, sometimes even on the toilet, and slobbering on our legs when he’s really carried away.

I even like other people’s cats, right up to the point where they let them out of the house to wander into our yard, kill the rabbits and birds and crap all over our vegetables and flowers. What the hell’s up with that? I don’t know anybody who thinks it would be a good idea to let their dogs run free, but with cats they think it’s a good idea. “But cats have to be let out of the house at night,” they argue. “That’s their nature.” No, that’s your nature.

So here’s my totally unsolicited advice to lazy, irresponsible cat owners: Keep your pet cat in your house at night or I’ll pump it full of so much caffeine it’ll come back to your house ready to shred your sofa, crap all over your hall on the way to the cat box and then hide in the cold-air ducts chain-smoking catnip reefers all day. You’ve been warned.