As you may know if you’re a faithful reader of my blog, I became The Bitch at my tennis club a month or so ago. If this is news to you, check out my post, Don’t Mess With Me. Don’t worry, I’ll wait while you read it. Okay, all finished? Now that you’re all caught up, let’s proceed, shall we? Anyway, since my recent crowning, I’ve not had occasion to rinse and repeat. That is, not until last week.

Something I’ve learned during my years on earth is that there are double standards. When a woman stands up for herself, she’s a bitch. When a man does, he’s assertive. But now that I have a reputation of sorts, I’m branching out. I’m riding this bitch-thing like a surfer on a really rad wave. Is that the correct terminology? I’ve never surfed so I’m just guessing here.

Anyway, our women feral cat feeders are sometimes harassed by assertive men. Why it’s normally men at the center of our negative encounters, I can’t say. But in working with ferals since 2005, I can only think of one woman who gave us grief. Now don’t get me wrong; I’m not attempting to disgrace men here. (They seem to be succeeding at that all by themselves.)

And the list goes on…

Anyhow, some of our volunteers have been receiving daily grief for many months via the construction company currently building condos on what was once the habitat for a colony of 35 feral cats. Although the kind man who owns the adjacent property gave us permission to house and feed the cats there, the foreman of the construction company apparently enjoys making life miserable for the feeders trying to reach that property.

For instance, he and his crew do things like locking the fence entering the yard…placing multiple barriers between the feeders and the cats…using their trucks to block the volunteers from entering or exiting the property. You know, junior high stuff. So in order to reach the 9 remaining cats (we relocated the others to new outdoor homes), head colony feeder, Loretta, was forced to get creative to keep the cats from starving after her attempts at reasoning with the foreman failed.

For months Loretta traipsed through mud up to her ankles, trench water up to her knees and BS up to her neck. For those reading this from Serbia and Angola (I actually have readers there), BS means bullshit. Yes, Loretta has put up with a lot more than necessary and finally reached her limit. Enter The Bitch.

Seems I’m getting the hang of this. So I drove to the construction site and demanded to speak to the head hotshot. I put my game face on, walked into his trailer like I owned the place and told him this had to stop…their actions were unacceptable…we have permission to be there…these cats will starve…this is now becoming a humane case…

In other words, I didn’t give the guy a chance to speak.

When I was finally finished, I gave him my best don’t-mess-with-me glare that a 5 foot 3 inch, 62-year-old woman can muster. This bad ass man with fingers thick as hotdogs immediately reached for a business card, wrote on it, handed it back to me with a frown and muttered…Next thing I know I’m leaving that trailer with a spring in my step and the combination to the locked fence in my hot little hands. Why he actually gave it to me, I can’t say. And honestly, I don’t care; the cats are being fed and our volunteers are no longer being hassled.

I’m beginning to realize there are definite benefits to being The Bitch.