Prisoner

Okay, okay, Wiley, we see you, staring forlornly out of the basement window which, at ground level, looks out directly onto our driveway, offering you a perfect view of the chipmunks who like to run and hide behind our neighbor's air-conditioning condensing unit. Despite the embarrassing shroud of dirt on the window -- we can plainly see that YOU WANT TO GO OUTSIDE...as if your incessant meowing and pawing at the door wasn't enough.

I realize that the hardest challenge of parenting our cats (and likely any human children we have) I will face is allowing them age-appropriate independence despite my catastrophic worrying.  Lesson #1: opening the door for Wiley to explore.

Once we moved the cats to Atlanta, I decided that Wiley, previously King of the Wild Outdoors, would revert to being an indoor cat. It simply would not be safe to let him outside in the city. So many things are different here than they were at my mom's house -- primarily, the amount of grass between the house and the road. Chapin = a couple of football fields worth. Atlanta = a couple of footballs.

My biggest fear? That Wiley would be mangled by a car (worse-case, the Hummer that lives next door), right after eating our neighbor's new kitten alive, rendering me blind with grief AND blackballed by all of the neighbors from future Bingo nights.

(Honestly, I didn't figure I would be able to stop the kitten massacre; with that haircut, this young cat definitely has a beating coming to him.)

It took a lot of soul-searching, urging from my husband and a vet's opinion that "sorry, he may continue to spray outside of the litter box so long as you keep him inside" to finally let Wiley out, but we're doing it. Kitten steps, mind you... he's only allowed out during the day, with lots of supervision. So far, he's limited his exploring to the back yard, which is a relief to me, since it's basically fenced-in on three sides. It seems he is scared of the noise made by the neighbor's air-conditioning condensing unit, the same machine he loves to watch from his indoor prison, so that stops him from heading up the driveway towards the treacherous road.

Furthermore, he is scared of the neighbor's kitten, who is known to walk the neighborhood and even cross the street, egad! We always know when she saunters into our yard, because there goes Wiley's meowing and pawing again... only this time, it's to be let inside.