Stray Cat Strut

In Ireland, most houses don't have screens on the windows. It's annoying. When you open the window, there is no screen between you and the great outdoors, which means, bugs and critters are free to come inside. Mind you, they don't have mosquitoes or flies in Ireland the way we do back home, but they do have moths, bees, and rodents. It just makes me feel uneasy. Even though my bedroom is upstairs in the house, my window opens out over the sun room, and I remember thinking that it would be very easy for a mouse or squirrel to come into my room from the roof of the sun room.

It was fairly warm in Ireland over the weekend, and as my room is south-facing, when the sun does actually shine here, my room gets very warm. I left my window open at night on the weekend because it was so stuffy otherwise. Well, on Saturday night I was woken up when some critter came in through my window, crawled over my legs and onto the floor. I started screaming, I was terrified. I just saw a fat, black shape with a tail and thought it was a giant rat. The creature jumped back over my bed and back out through the window, which was when that I realized it was a neighbourhood cat. I'm pretty sure it belongs to someone in the neighbourhood, but I would say it's more a semi-stray cat as it spends most of its time in all the neighbourhood yards and I'm not sure it's fed regularly and I'm positive it doesn't have all its shots.

I closed the window after it, and it tried to get in again a couple of times that night, which makes me wonder if it was chasing a mouse when it came inside my window. There is a ledge near my window that separates the sun room from the kitchen and it sat on there staring into my window for a long time. I know this because I was awake the rest of the night staring back. It goes without saying that I have a serious case of the willies – and not just because of the possibility of a mouse in my room. Cats just creep me out.

While it doesn't get much warmer in Ireland than the 16C it was on Saturday, it bothers me that I can't open my window anymore unless it's daylight and I'm in the room. My room gets very hot – even by my standards, and I would like to air my room out, but there's *no way* I'm letting this happen again. I can't see a conceivable way to get a screen attached to my window either without getting the whole window replaced. I'm currently looking into getting a safety latch, like they would have for people with young children, so that my window can only be opened a little bit.

Not having screens isn't unique to Ireland; lots of European countries don't have window screens on the houses – even the modern ones. I don't get it. Isn't anyone concerned about rodents - or evil stray cats?