By the way - the suggestions to check for local barter/loan were VERY helpful. I have a lead on a live-capture trap that I may be able to get use of for free. I hope it works out.
Since I’m harvesting them as food, I actually don’t want less of them in the lawn!
And you don’t pull them - you just pick the leaves. Unless you’re making wine (which uses the flowers) or “coffee”, which uses the roots (which I’m not doing). The leaves grow back quickly, like weeds.
If you can sacrifice a bit of food budget to buy a small container of catnip, I’ve found that spreading that in the trap along with a can of tuna (spoils quickly, unfortunately) or dry dog or cat chow (lasts longer, but free for us since we have a dog) will draw in even the most skittish of feral cats. Sadly, my neighborhood has a fair number homeless felines and I’ve had to trap a number of them. Good luck.
One other thought: my neighbor swears by spraying unwanted cats with salty water. Cats hate being wet, lick to groom/dry themselves, and can be fast learners. He says they stay away from his place when he’s able to splash them just one time. If you can actually catch the cat in the act and squirt it with a good dose of salt water, it might work for you.
Whatever option you take, I hope it works out quickly and before this damn cat causes you any more problems. Much as I like animals, I think you’d be justified in taking any means you need to stop the cat from damaging your food supply. And good luck with finding work and with your husband’s health as well.
Kinko’s is almost always hiring, too, and they have no particular experience requirements, provide health coverage (in California anyway), and pay reasonably well.
If you’re in a rural-ish area and can drive around to nearby farms, you might find work there. It’s hard work and dirty, but farmers are usually happy to find legal citizens who are willing to work because it keeps their ass out of the fire.
Sorry for your troubles. Keep your chin up.
Except that…
-
How high would the fence have to be before Kitteh would be unable, or unwilling, to climb over it in order to use his toilet?
-
She doesn’t have a garden plot as such that can be fenced in. She’s gardening in the weedpatch that passes for a communal backyard in the rear of her apartment building, and as such, she can’t fence it in. Her landlord gave her permission to till it up and plant veg, but since he wouldn’t be happy to see her put up chicken wire, he’d almost certainly draw the line at erecting a jury-rigged fence around the entire thing out of scrap materials.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=454485&page=1&pp=50
Well thank God for that!
Is it possible that your rant was actually only 10% about the damn cat, and was perhaps (like an iceberg) 90% a hidden rant that was:
“I have fallen on hard times and have very little resources to draw upon, and it really sucks, and I’m fucking sick and tired of people assuming that I must have money stashed somewhere because I’m not living in a box”
Good luck with the cat from hell.
(and yes, cat poo does not a good fertilizer make)
Dang… Miss or misread a post and one whole suggestion shot to shit. Sorry.
Whoa this thread is in need of a little something. Say hello to my little Friend.
Carry on.
phouka, I took the time to consider Broomstick’s plight and how dire it is, which is why I tried to offer a suggestion I thought would be less costly, and I offered to pay for it. Her response to me was filled with hateful vitriol as she cussed me out for daring to offer help that turned out not to have been helpful to her afterall.
I don’t think “it’s about me”. I’m not offended that she didn’t want to take me up on my offer – that’s her prerogative. All she had to do was say “thanks, but that won’t work for me, either, as I don’t have a credit card” as she had pretty much done with most of the other suggestions. In fact, if she had outright ignored me, I wouldn’t have cared – I’d’ve figured out that that wasn’t a viable option in her mind. But instead, she was vicious and nasty towards me.
And it’s perfectly understandable that she lash out in a cussing rage against me, but when I lash back, I’m suddenly as evil as rapists and murderers according to Qadgop. Excuse me for being human, too. I guess there are no allowances for that.
But you’re both right and wrong that I’m a “better person than that.” Obviously I’m not a better person than that, given that I’m as subject as anyone to succumbing to my temper when I’m outright attacked, especially when all I’ve done to “deserve” it was to try to be nice, even though I missed the mark. But I do strive to be a better person than that, so I will apologize for wishing her garden be destroyed.
Broomstick, you have my apologies and well-wishes.
Wow, Shayna, you managed to be an even bigger cunt with that “apology.” Why don’t you just scuttle off and hide somewhere for a while?
Well, MORE than 50% is about the damn cat. I really loathe that particular, individual cat. But yeah, some of it was the whole “I’m tired of people thinking I have more money than I actually do”.
One of my other pet peeves (which, I hasten to add, I have NOT seen in this thread) is “why don’t you ask your family for help?”. Well, it used to be that I was the one helping out my parents, but of course that’s not possible now. My economic woes didn’t just put my husband and I on the skids, it had an impact on my parents, too. I have a sister in Michigan, but she’s also poverty-level AND she has two teen age sons to support/send to the school. I have a sister in New York who is a doctor, which makes people think “Oooo! big money!” but she’s a new MD so while her salary is nice it’s not on the level of a well-established doctor and she has crushing medical school debt to deal with - also a husband who’s business is suffering in the bad economy and two kids, one of which has chronic medical problems, and both of whom want to go to college. About the only “help” my family can realistically give is the promise that if I lose my current residence due to being unable to pay the rent they will be able to provide me with shelter so I and my husband are not literally on the street. That is, of course, a good thing, but needless to say I do not want to become so desparate as to actually need to use that help.
Third pet peeve is “you’re so poor - how can you afford XYZ?” Like, for instance, we’ll be going to see Iron Man in the movie theater on my husband’s birthday. Omigosh! You’re destitute! HOW can you afford THAT? Well, friends (we have those, you know) are chipping in to do this as a birthday present. Rather like on my birthday when I received a new pair of shoes - not pretty, fancy choes but utterly practical shoes which, by the way, are a godsend for my part time job where I am on my feet for 5 hours at a time.
I’ve got a few things in the works and the situation might become much less dire by summer, but May and June may be two of the hardest months money-wise this year.
No, I said your response was cold, and nearly evil, or tending that way.
And I stand by that. The OP did not wish devastation and destruction on something vital to your continued well-being. She dropped the F-bomb a few times, and seemed frustrated & angry in general with your bolded, enlarged Font response to her plight, but didn’t wish personal disaster or suffering on you.
Do you disagree with that assessment?
DISCLAIMER: This is my first post, and I am seriously technically challenged, so apologies in advance as I have no clue how to quote or bold properly, link to posts, threads etc., and by the time I figure it out and get it right my Guest Membership will likely have expired… 
Broomstick stated upthread that:
Yet in the OP’s related “Gardening Questions” thread in GQ, (Sorry, just not getting the linking to posts/threads part) which I assume prompted this pitting, she stated that:
So, Broomstick… I get that you’re broke, and don’t have a credit card, but if you HAVE savings, could you not dip into that for the $60 (refundable, if I understand correctly) deposit to get a trap for one day and give it a try?
How would the (non-refundable) $5 to “rent” a trap for one day NOT be money well spent, considering that A) you have already put much more than $5 into establishing said garden (not to mention the time and effort you’ve put in as well) and B) the food said garden will (hopefully) eventually yield will certainly be worth far more than $5? 
FWIW, I’m also poor & broke, as my husband and I are BOTH disabled and unable to work (our computer and internet access are gifts from our kids so that we can keep in touch with them, see pictures of them & their families etc.) so I can relate to your dilemma in a lot of ways. But I am also a cat lover, and as such would exhaust every possible avenue before resorting to having to hurt or injure a cat for ANY reason. YMMV.
ETA: Upon preview I see that you posted that you might have a lead on a live-capture trap that you can get for free, and I really hope that that works out for you. If it doesn’t, though, I still fail to see how it would not be money well spent to “rent” one for a day since you say you HAVE savings, and will get the $60 deposit BACK.
I hate that word. She sounded sincere to me…
Considering that my bolded, enlarged font was not in response to her plight, but to the person who posted in bolded, enlarged font in response to my recommendation, yes, I disagree with that assessment.
And considering that my efforts to research an alternative to her problem that hadn’t been previously recommended, going so far as to make a phone call on her behalf, and even offering to pay for it, her cursing vitriol really hurt me. No, she didn’t wish destruction on something vital to my survival, but she lashed out at me personally.
As I said above, I’m as human and as subject to losing my temper as everyone else, including Broomstick. I’ve apologized for that and wished her well, as I had been doing from my first post in this thread. And I mean that sincerely. I started out posting my sympathy to her situation and commiserated over having the same problem myself, having stray cats shitting in my vegetable garden. There’s really no reason to believe I was disingenuous in those offerings, so no real reason to believe I actually want her garden to fail. I lashed out in anger because she hurt me. I’ve now apologized. If that’s unacceptable to you, and you still want to judge me as speaking evil bordering on rape and murder, that’s your call to make.
Why not just whack the little fucker with your username?
I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist.
Anyways, I had probs with cats and found that a liberal sprinkling of mustard powder kept the bastids away
Methinks you have prior issues with Shayna that transcend this posting…
You’re the only one mentioning rape and murder, Shayna. I in essence said that your hope for the OP was an evil statement to make. And I still think that, about the statement you typed. Not about you. Evil thoughts don’t automatically equate to an evil person.
In fact, that’s why the statement caught my eye, coming from you it was rather unexpected (based on my recollections of your posts in the past, anyway). Coming from some posters here it would have been all too typical.
And since you apologized for it, I assume you feel that it wasn’t a good thing to say, either. So it’s settled as far as I’m concerned.
Well, my cats have no problem getting to the top of my neighbors fence, which is 6 or 7 feet high, and solid wood boards. Sometimes they leap all the way to the top, sometimes they land 3/4ths up, hold on with their claws, and climb the rest of the way up. Then they sit on the top rail and irritate at his dog, waving their tails down for him to bark at.
So the fence would have to be higher than 6-7 feet. But even that might not work – this cat could probably use his claws to climb even higher fences.
How about ‘sacrificing’ a small plot of land, specifically for this (and other) cats? When my cats started bothering gardens (mine and my neighbors), I dug up another patch of ground, added some sand, and had a nice, loosely tilled patch for them. They soon preferred this to the garden, with those annoying plants in their way. Possibly a little catnip or drained juice from a can of tuna will help attract them to this spot.