The Dinner Guest
October 9, 2008
The other night I walked into the wood stove room (pictured above) to find one of the kittens eating dinner along side a skunk. The skunk came in through the cat door and started eating the cat food. Somehow the thing didn’t spray which would have caused me to sell or burn my house down. After taking photos of the skunk Amity took our aerosol air horn (usually used for kitten discipline) and blasted our visitor until it got annoyed and waddled outside.
Luckily, cats and skunks are soul brothers of sorts and after some curious sniffing they settled into a nice dinner. My friend Owen used to live with me along with his two dogs, one a rambunctious Lab/Dane mix and that would have spelled disaster in this case.
The air horn is a very loud but effective kitty trainer. Initially, they freeze wide-eyed and then run around the kitchen like wild, depraved maniacs. But, they stay off the counter. The skunk reacted with surprising calmness. He finished chewing his mouthful and slowly headed for the door and out into the night. Lessons learned: skunks will come in through cat doors and air horns, for a plethora of reasons are awesome.
