A mild-mannered cat by day, at night Rusty was just the opposite. Often, Bill and I would lie in bed quarreling over whether we should let it out to wander in the dark or put up with another sleepless night. So, instead, we lay in the dark each noisy night and wondered what damage Rusty would do. And always in the morning, if I had forgotten to put the butter in the cupboard, there were marks from a rough, little tongue and once even a paw print.
Something had to give. Bill looked at me straight in the eyes, "Do it." My reservations were such, however, that it took me several weeks and the loss of nearly a pound of butter to decide we didn't have much choice.
That night, I put Rusty on his cat bed and patted him a little guiltily on the head. Then I began filling the kitchen sink with about two inches of water. Rusty loved jumping into a damp sink and then tracking water all over the cupboards and across the kitchen floor. According to the article I saved from a website to my folder, cats used to jumping into your sink, but they won't do it again if they jump in and find a couple of inches of water.
Next, I cleared the cupboards of everything. Then I got out all my metal cookie sheets and a fork to go with each. According to the article, you should support a cookie sheet with a fork. When your cat jumps on the counter, he will knock down the insecurely balanced cookie sheets. What happens next will stop him from doing it a second time.
Everything in place, I slipped onto our bed quietly, waiting. Suddenly, there came an awfully loud noise of metal. A chain reaction of crashes next. Finally, Rusty rounded the corner in the hall heavily and leaped through our doorway onto the foot of our bed, trembling under our cover. And that was the night Rusty, the Midnight Troublemaker, retired.
