Potter: Surviving a cat attack

EastIdahoNews.com Reporter Mark Richardson interviewed Tony Potter about this story. Listen to the interview above.

I came home at 11:00 Thursday night to find my cat stuck high in our crabapple tree and my wife on the lookout with the hose at the ready.

“The devil cat is back,” she said.

Devil Cat has terrorized my backyard a number of times since we got our cat, but I thought he was gone for good after his last visit when, upon hearing the screeching catfight out my back door, I jumped out of bed, grabbed my night stick, hit the back floodlights and tore out of my bedroom into the backyard like a — well — a crazy middle-aged guy in his underwear racing across his lawn at 2 a.m. under the glare of backyard floodlights wielding a night stick screaming threats at a fleeing cat.

So I felt pretty confident I could handle this situation.

First I attempted a painful and somewhat harrowing climb to rescue my cat from the crabapple tree, which I’m glad I can say I’ve done. Among the failures of this night, at least I can say I survived a stuck-cat rescue mission.

As I handed the cat down to my wife and jumped out of the tree, though, the first things I saw when standing up was devil eyes staring right back at me from out of my raspberry patch across the lawn.

With reflexes like a really, really slow cat, I grabbed the hose my wife already had ready, and I hosed the crap out of him. I hosed him right in the face; right back into the depths of my raspberry patch.

Then, for good measure, I thoroughly doused the raspberry patch for about a minute, sure that at some point he had escaped and fled the raspberries and my life forever. My cat, however, let me know that the devil had not escaped, pointedly making it clear that a cat was, indeed, still hiding in my raspberries.

I had to go in. No more distance-hosing. It was about to get up-close and terrifying.

I ran into the house to gather what I thought I might need when hunting a devil cat in a raspberry patch, and came out sporting my 150-Lumen (really bright) headlamp and the FastHawk Tomahawk I keep under my mattress.

I was still terrified. Seriously, I did not want to go into those raspberries. Only my recent practice throwing the Tomahawk gave me the boost I needed, and I very carefully waded into the soaking wet raspberries, expecting to be full-on attacked at any moment.

There was no sneak attack.

There wasn’t even a search.

Devil cat was right there; sitting on my special chair – the father’s day present from my wife and kids – the chair nestled in a small clearing in the raspberries where I go to relax; the chair now occupied by a calm/threatening devil looking right back at me with bright devil eyes: and not moving! I was ten feet away, shining a headlamp right in his face, tomahawk poised for throwing, and he didn’t move.

“Can I throw the tomahawk at him” I called out to my wife.

“Absolutely not,” she quickly replied, but I guess the cat knew things might be getting serious for him because he jumped the fence to the parking lot of the apartment complex behind my house. I tried to do the same, but got caught halfway over, headlamp flailing wildly over the parking lot and a dozen apartment windows.

What I learned about surviving a cat attack: A hose is not very effective, a tall wooden fence won’t keep them out, a tomahawk isn’t terribly practical and — well — above all I learned that I have no idea how to keep this cat out for good. Usually I end these columns with some sort of a solution, but today it’s a question:

“What do I do next time?” Send me an email at tonypotter@eastidahonews.com.