I’ve learned something over the years. My cats love to play with any kind of flying insect. They do not care if it is a common housefly or a big-ass bumble-bee. So of course, when Mr. Wasp decided to invade my living quarters this morning, they found him first and decided to play with him. Now, my kitties are very good at evading Mr. Wasp’s stinger, but I have no idea how long they had been playing with him before I discovered that he was there. All I know is that by the time I found my uninvited house-guest, my cats had already made sure he was as pissed off as possible.
They don’t want to kill it, of course, they just want it as angry as it can possibly be so as to make it dangerous for me to try to either kill it or remove it from the house. Then they look at me with that “see what a brave and fearless hunter I am” look, as if I should praise them for it.
What is it with cats and stingy insects? Why, kitties, must you piss them off so? What do you even do about it when you find your pets playing with one? I wanted to remove the cat from the room, and close the door long enough to give the wasp time to calm down, but I was worried that I might get stung in the process. I can’t exactly use the can of Raid I have, either, since I’d risk spraying my feline friends with poison.
It’s usually a very simple process. If I find the invader first, I just open the window and let it out, or drown it in Raid. But the cats, well, they just have to piss it off and make sure the difficulty level is over 9,000 by the time I find it.
Mr. Wasp is dead, anyway. Eventually, the kitties lost interest, and he calmed down to the point I was able to sneak up on him and squish him with a wad of paper towels.
I laughed at my roommate while he chased a wasp around the house with a can of deodorant, as if deodorant was really gonna kill a pissed off wasp instead of just turn him into an even meaner and better-smelling version of his nasty old waspy self.
Until said wasp was caught in the fragrant aerosol mist, whereupon he promptly dropped to the carpet and snuffed it. Not sniffed, snuffed.
Perfume seems to work, too, much better than naughty language, and has the added bonus of encouraging the cats to vacate the room.
I’ve found that pretty much any liquid will at least cause the insect to drop to the floor, whereupon it can get the shoe. I’m not sure if I’ve tried straight up water yet.
Hairspray. Good ole 1980s era Aqua Net. Gums up their wings so they can’t fly, at which point they drop to the ground and can be safely squished with one’s shoe.