Bearing Up In North Georgia

As I said, four years ago we moved to Massachusetts. My mother was skeptical of our prospects for finding a place to live that would allow four cats. We were skeptical of our success at keeping Mr. Peanut Butter inside- he'd been a marauding the neighborhood boy for nearly ten tears. When my parents took him in, they said they wouldn't let him out, because there were bears and such up there in the mountains. We warned them about the screens on their beautiful screened-in deck in the treetops- one of the last things I did before we put our Orlando house on the market was replace the screens on three windows and the sliding glass door, and that was just from delays in letting him out. They followed through with their plan, and we were amazed that Mr. Butter (they call him Peanie) seemed content to stay inside- except he loves to go out on the deck. The molding beside the door to the deck is pretty scratched up.

Well, as of last week, some of their screens are torn to shreds. A bear tried to get in the deck. It believed there must be birdseed in there. It climbed 16 feet up the corner post and tore out the screen. Damn, no birdseed. It went out onto the lower garage roof and put paw prints on the windows of the main house. It scared my parents pretty badly, but it hasn't been back. Mr. Butter, aka Peanie, has taken the opportunity to venture out onto the garage roof to sniff around, however. But he came back. He's almost fourteen now. I guess his marauding days are over. And he KNOWS there are bears out there.