My neighborhood is plagued with stray cats, stray dogs, and even stray chickens. None of them are dangerous, except maybe the chickens. No one feeds the strays, but somehow they manage to find enough food to live on. They reproduce and the number of strays increases.

The cats are extremely annoying. They roam around and slink on and off my property. The most annoying part is at night when they're performing their sexual rituals. Most of the time, I can't tell if they're fighting or making love or both. I can understand them when they're making love, though. Really. The male cat says, "nowwwwww….", and the female cat says, "noooooo…". The pitch goes up and the pitch goes down, but it's the same thing repeated for hours on end.

The stray dogs are really, really stupid and I'm glad I don't have a dog allergy. I have a gate in front of my driveway that has these open slots at the first 6 inches next to the cement. These dogs will squeeze through the bars and hunt for food in my yard. They do this every night even though there IS no food in my yard, not even bones. My son caught one about a month ago, roaming around our front yard. It got scared, for whatever reason, and tried to squeeze back through the gate bars faster than it was physically able to. The result? The dog's bowels evacuated faster than the dog did, leaving an untimely mess on my driveway. Strangely, I haven't seen hide or hair of that dog since. I think I know why, but I'll get back to that in a minute.

The stray chickens are not the same chickens that some of us grew up with on Grandma's farm or wherever. The White Leghorn hens are raised as the primary source of poultry here just like in the US. No, these stray chickens are natives. They're brown and vicious, kind of like my wife. If you walk past one, it'll peck your foot. I don't know if they think I'm food or they're just pissed off. All I know is that they're hostile.

The stray dog and the stray chicken populations drop every so often. There are some poor, hungry Filipinos here and some of them will risk disease in order to taste the flesh of a stray dog. Needless to say, stray chickens get eaten up all the time but I'm not sure if it's Filipinos or the stray dogs that are eating them. Unless I see it with my own eyes, I can't verify anything.

Sometimes I wish I had a BB or pellet rifle. I know it would take weeks, but I would use my expert rifle marksmanship to pick off the stray cats one by one. Some of you might think I'm being cruel but I assure you I am not. These cats are not pets. In fact, I've never heard of a Filipino here keeping a cat as a pet. Regardless, they keep breeding and breeding without any concern for the humans that want to destroy them.

Dogs are fair game and another source of food for Filipinos, especially the native tribes. Unlike the Chinese and Koreans, however, they won't eat cats. Probably because cat meat is too stringy. Who knows? But dogs that appear to be unowned are fair game and will eventually die or get eaten. Stray chickens too.

There are other animals around here that I haven't mentioned yet: Water buffalo, goats, and monkeys. Damn monkeys! The little SOBs will steal anything they can get their hands on, whether it's edible or not. Sometimes I think they take trinkets and stuff into the jungle with them just to impress their mates or other monkeys in their little clans. Maybe they're selling them on the black market. Again, who knows?