It was inevitable that one day some gossip would revolve around to us which involved us and we would have to deal with it. Such was the case yesterday. It truly is like Days of our Lives. Becca and I had returned home from shopping in Nambour and while I was unpacking the car, Mr B came over and covertly informed me that "he had heard" (classic gossip starter line) that our cats were bothering the back neighbours (not in the caravan park but over the back fence) and they were going to ring the council to set up traps for them. He said he felt we should know because he liked us and he didn't want to see anything happen to our pets, even though he was 'not a cat person'!! When I enquired further as to the source, he wasn't willing to divulge that tidbit to me. Mmmm..... my trust meter was twitching slightly at this stage and I had already guessed where he got his information.
Ok, so my first move was to contain the cats in the annex which was possible because they had rushed in for their food top-up as soon as I arrived back from shopping. Unfortunately, they weren't happy about suddenly being locked in and Becca wasn't happy either because it meant she couldn't come and go as she pleased. Within ten minutes they had both escaped under the canvas so I just threw my hands in the air because they both went in different directions. In hindsight, if I hadn't locked them up they probably would have stayed around anyway which is what they normally do, either under a tree or on the gravel adjacent to our annex.
Almost immediately after I had been told about the cats, I had decided that I was going to approach the people who had supposedly made the complaint and apologise to them and try to make peace. It was a bold thought and move on my part as I am normally one to avoid confrontation but again, this change of lifestyle and environment has made me bolder and more up front than normal. When Steve came home, I told him the situation and he went straight over to Mr B for more details and he revealed what I had already assumed was the person responsible for this gossip.
It was quite stressful for the next couple of hours because we were thinking the worst case scenario was keeping the cats locked in the van constantly until Steve rigged up an outside enclosure which was not ideal. Later in the afternoon, we heard the neighbour come home on his motorbike so we (as a family) walked around to their house to apologise and learn more about them. I had looked up the district on google maps earlier in the day because many of the houses around the caravan park are not on standard shaped blocks and some have shared driveways and we didn't want to approach the wrong house.
As we walked up the driveway, we didn't know what we were going to encounter. I had prepared myself for being yelled at but then at least I would know where we and the neighbours stood. The house was actually a colourbond shed which the people were living in and we made ourselves known to the man who was home. We humbly apologised and then began to piece together the circumstances of the complaint and why. As it turned out, the people enjoyed the birds that visited their yard and a baby magpie was being stalked by a cat and they were concerned about the fledgling magpie. When the man (David, by the way) described the cats responsible, it turned out not to be our cats at all. He saw a 'red' cat meaning ginger and a black cat, neither of which were ours. He also said that this incident was over three weeks before and that he hadn't seen the cats since and that the baby magpie was flying now anyway so he and his wife weren't so worried. They had been talking to our nearby neighbour and mentioned the cats and she jumped on the bandwagon, blamed our cats and then the council trapping was discussed. So the upshot of all this is that our meddling neighbour blew it all out of proportion and made the whole situation into a drama. David said he didn't want us to lock up our cats as they like all animals but we asked him to talk to us directly in future if there were any further incidents. We offered our phone number but he took note of where we lived from over the fence and agreed to let us know if our cats did become a problem.
We said our goodbyes after some general chitchat and walked back down his driveway feeling very relieved that we had decided to confront the situation instead of letting gossip take over. How different things could have been if we hadn't had the strength to tackle this head on and deal with the consequences whatever they had been.
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