Greg In The Desert

My indoor cat Saturn has apparently made friends with a outdoor cat. On more than one occasion I have walked up to the back door to find my cat staring at the back door while a black cat is walking off. It usually spots me before I spot it and starts walking away.

I never hear my cat making any indication that she dislikes the black cat and as far as I can tell, they just sit there staring at each other through the glass. Mostly I only notice the quiet since Saturn has stopped running around and spazing out.

Last week I drove up into the driveway and saw the black cat sitting on the front porch, with my cat watching out the front window. The black cat wouldn’t allow me to approach it and ran off. Where the black cat was setting was a large dead rat, with it’s guts pulled out.

I’ve read that a cat will leave a dead animal for its owner as a sign that the owner doesn’t know how to hunt, the cat is trying to show them how it’s done. In this case, Perhaps the black cat was trying to show Saturn how to hunt since she cannot go outside. Or the black cat is trying to impress Saturn with it’s hunting skills.

I have no problem with Saturn learning to become a better hunter through this method. Especially if it reduces the rat population in the neighborhood. Saturn has done a great job at eliminating the crickets, scorpions and other bugs from the house. However unless I get any varmints in the house, Saturn will have to be happy with hunting twist ties and pieces of plastic from the trash.

I thought I would try to turn a negative into a positive with my scorpions situation by capturing them and keeping in them in a glassed habitat in the house. Perhaps there’s money to be made selling scorpions.

The first thing I did was to clean out a 10 gallon aquarium that was being unused.

I then added cactus from the back yard.

I then added some sandy soil (commonly referred to as dirt), also from the back yard.

I then added a pile of rocks, from the front yard this time.

I then added the scorpion (Vaejovis flavus). This one came from inside the house.

The first scorpion died after keeping it in the tank for about a month. This was despite providing it several crickets that it quickly ate.

Since Saturn the cat came along, I rarely get a scorpion before she kills them. Plus she is has eliminated the scorpion food supply in the house so I don’t know that I will get much more of them. The tank currently sits empty.

The New Mexico Scorpions start playing October 19th. The real live scorpions have started invading my house on August 12th.

Last year I saw my very first scorpion, in my house, on July 31st. I then found a total on 7 of them over the next two month. I then took some steps to find major pathways that could give these guys a way in. Apparently I didn’t get them all.

I know the crickets were coming in around the rear sliding door and the garage is insect central. Lets see how the next two months go.

Last year it started with spiders. Big scarry looking spiders. All harmless. Then I had Scorpions. 7 to be exact. I had big gaping holes between the door jamb and wall leading out to the garage. I filled those gaps with expanding foam. I also weather sealed the front door. I’ve had no further problems spiders or scorpions since then, but that was near the end of summer.

This summer I’ve only had a few spiders, nothing like last year and so far no scorpions. But I have had crickets and crickets and more crickets. My weapon of choice is the Dyson. For several nights in a row, I vacuumed up around 6 crickets at a time.

The thing about crickets, they seem to hang out where they came into the house. I was finding most of them coming from one area of the living room. After a few days, I started looking around and found a big crack between the fireplace and the wall. There were even crickets in it. I filled all the cracks around the fire place with expanding foam. This has blocked off the main cricket highway.

Now I’m finding a few in the hallway. I’m finding at least two a night under the refrigerator. The other thing about crickets is the male makes the chirping noise to attract the female. Whenever a male is chirping, there’s almost always a female nearby.

A few nights ago I found scorpion number 4. After vacuuming him up I quickly found scorpion number 5. I’ve seen 5 more scorpions in the last month than I have seen in my life, and I’ve lived in Arizona and New Mexico all my life.

I hope this is just a natural reaction to the rain we have had. I put down some glue traps a few days ago and so far no hits. I also haven’t seen any bugs, except for a few crickets, in a few days.