Do Not Want

My cats before these two half-wild things were content to go outside, pee in a flowerbed, turn around, and come back in the house. The present two feral rescues my boyfriend has talked me into have kept things around here, to put it mildly, lively. The orange one with the loud purr ate a hole in the floor of the house and escaped out of it as a kitten to thwart my well-intentioned plan to convert him to gracious home living. The calico has to be checked on her every entry during the day to prevent the daily murder of an anole lizard under the dining room table. The kitty rodeo they put on every day and night at ten sharp leaves every rug and piece of furniture askew and the dog looking a mite nervous. And the dead squirrel who appeared twice under the dining room table, once intact and next regurgitated after I had flung his corpse into the ditch, is best forgotten.
Orange badman is the one I love best because he does love to curl up next to me and purr hugely. Tonight he did not come when I called him and I was concerned, as he had a scrape on his tail and I wanted to check on it. A few hours later, Rachel Maddow was on the DVR and I heard some scratching at the front door. I opened to check to see if it was him, and greeted him happily....um. What is that. No, really. Why is your head down, and what is gray, exactly.
Discretion being the better part of valor, he went under the coffee table, and I went for the broom and a small plastic trash can, visions of the previous squirrel violation dancing in my head. I poked the ginger avenger with the broomstick and he waved me off: nothing to see here, nothing in my mouth.  I peered more closely; sure enough. Nothing in his mouth. But in my only pair of shoes that I wear? My Keens that I wear all day, every day?
There is a black button nose, twitch-wise, and a pair of beady eyes. Smallish roundish gray ear, also. Yeah, way cute, whatever. Vermin in my Keen. Fucking cat has verminated my Keen. There is a squirrel in my Keen. I hook the shoe into the trashcan with the broomstick and look closer; guess what. No cute furry squirrel tail even. Cat has totally ratted my Keen, not even squirrelated it, rattleated vermilated violated now my shoe has bubonic plague and hantavirus dammit. There is a rat in my shoe in my house. Rat.
Boy their tails are ugly.
I take the trash can to the front porch, dump the shoe out, rat runs off, calico takes off after it, I lock the door after the both of them. Keen goes into the washer.
I definitely should have held out for the Abyssinian I wanted in the first damn place.