The Cockroach

Mrs. Perfect owns a silky terrier named Muffin, Button or Zipper—I can never remember. I call the dog "the Cockroach." She's the color of a giant palmetto bug and scurries around so quickly and erratically that she seems to have six legs. Mrs. Perfect also has a white picket fence, the slats of which are spaced widely enough that the Cockroach can escape, which she does daily. The dog then runs across the street to leave pee-mail on my lawn for the basenjis and, if the cat is out, yap at and chase Felix. Eventually, Mrs. Perfect will realize that her dog is loose and stands on her steps to shout, "Come here!" a command the Cockroach ignores. Then Mrs. Perfect will come stomping after the dog, shouting, "Come here! Come here now!" which the Cockroach believes is an invitation to play and so initiates a chase down the street. It's obvious who is the alpha in that relationship.

On most days, I find the Cockroach merely annoying. If she squeezes through the fence when I am working in the front yard, I have to tolerate her standing in the street barking at me. If I want to walk the basenjis, I have to wait until Mrs. Perfect finally catches the Cockroach so that my dogs don't mistake the little mutt as prey. Yesterday, however, was different.

I was watching the news when Yo-Yo and Bug ran to the front window, their attention fixed on the drama unfolding outside. The Cockroach was loose again; Mrs. Perfect was chasing her over my front lawn. This time when the Cockroach came to terrorize Felix, Felix was already in a stand-off with Joey, the neighbor's cat. The situation was tense, tails low and twitching, ears plastered against each cat's head. The Cockroach came roaring up anyway, with Mrs. Perfect shouting, "No! NO! Come HERE!" One of the cats, I didn't see which, wheeled around and swatted the Cockroach, startling her enough that Mrs. Perfect could finally scoop up the dog and take her home.

When I took Yo-Yo out for her walk later that evening, Mrs. Perfect [who must have been watching for me?] ran out on her steps and shouted across the street, "Did you hear me yelling under your windows?"

"Yes." I thought, silly me, I was about to get an apology for the noise and trespassing.

"Muffin [or Button or Zipper] was after your cats ..." [Because I'm not married, Mrs. Perfect believes every cat in the neighborhood belongs to me.]

I started to say not to worry, that the cats could take care of themselves, when Mrs. Perfect added "... but they got her." Matthew, her son, wailed, "Her face is bleeding!"

It was then I realized that the whole situation, in Mrs. Perfect's eyes, was my fault. If I didn't have a cat who liked to lie on the front sidewalk, her dog wouldn't have gotten scratched because, of course, it wasn't her fault that her perfect white picket fence wasn't escape proof or that she had no control over the Cockroach. There was no problem with her dog in my yard terrorizing the cats, but it wasn't okay that the cats defended themselves.

I expected that today she would come over demanding that I pay a vet bill, but she must have told the story to enough people whose sympathy was with me because I never got the visit. It's too bad that spraying the yard perimeter with Raid won't keep that damn dog out.