An ABC of unwanted guests

I have just had a fantastic two months of rest and relaxation, sea and sun, food and fun. It was so fantastic that I did not feel like writing anything on this blog (I did write some other stuff, but it is not yet fit for public scrutiny). But the holiday itself contained more than enough material for some blog entries. Like one on an important recurrent theme: unwanted guests. (We also had a whole slew of wanted guests - family, friends, friends of family, family of friends ... but that is another story)

The unwanted guests were, in alphabetical order (but not in order of importance)
1. ants
2. a burglar and a billboard, and
3. a cat

In chronological order, the burglar was our first unwanted visitor, and the less said about him, the better. Except maybe that his is about 2 meters tall and probably drives an old, clunky metallic grey Peugeot or Renault, and if you catch him, please get our stuff back.

The billboard was erected in our absence by a major Spanish bank whose name rhymes with BancCaca, and if the wording were any indication, its intention was to sell our apartment. Obviously, we were not happy with this: it is true we have not finished paying the mortgage, but we are neither late nor bankrupt, and our mortgage is with a completely different bank. A few inquiries later we had our answer: the Spanish bank was trying to sell the land on which they had placed the sign, together with a great many other plots in the area. Somebody had obviously made a mistake on the wording.

But they had certainly not made a mistake regarding the illegal placement of the sign: they never applied for a permit, and when, after having moved both the prophet and the mountain (=making a few calls and visits to the right people), the city council finally agreed with us and told the bank to remove it, they moved it some 30 meters to the side instead.

On to our next unwanted visitor: a cat. I can't say for sure that it was really the third one, in chronological order, because I suspect that it may have been a regular visitor, but that we never noticed. But this time we did. The first time was when we (=I) didn't feel like putting the garbage in the garbage bin (100 meters uphill from us) at night, and left it on the kitchen floor instead.
Sometime around three o'clock we heard strange scratching sounds. When I got up to investigate, and found the garbage bag open. And I could smell fish. So I put the broken bag in another bag, and closed all the possible entries except the sliding glass door in our bedroom. And just as I was dropping off to sleep again, I heard a sound, opened my eyes to see two green orbs only a half meter from my face, and was suddenly wide awake again. But at least it confirmed what I had told my wife to calm her down: it really was just a cat, and not a rat or mice. But that was not the last time it came to call: a few days later, having forgot all about it, my wife left a fish casserole on the kitchen counter to cool. She did think to cover it with a heavy metal lid, but around 3 o'clock in the morning there was a CRASH from the kitchen. We heard it, but didn't think much of it, but in the morning, it was clear that our pesky (and probably infest-ridden) feline "friend" had come to visit again.

Which brings me to the ants. Not much to report there: ants are everywhere, and will probably take over from us humans some fine post-apocalyptic day, but in fact, they weren't all that much of a problem this year. I just mention them here because I need them for the snappy title of this entry.