My cat has a job and she does it well

This is Pico. She's a mean cat. A grumpy cat. An angry cat. A difficult cat.

How rotten is Pico? A few years ago, we wound up with Pico because one of my mother-in-law's friends had developed an allergy to cats. So she desperately wanted to find a home for her dear, sweet Pico.

A couple of years after the cat came to live us, I noticed that same friend lived in a house with four cats in it. She didn't want Pico back.

I, The Hawg, was duped.

However, Pico has an important job around my house and she earns her keep. I'll get into that in a minute.

I was reading a post earlier on Monkey Fables and Tales about the joy of insects invading homes in the fall. We get a lot of bugs here in central Arkansas, and that's particularly true in my case as I live near the Saline River. We get all manner of assorted critters here, in fact, but our rat terrier takes care of the snakes in the yard while Pico murders the insects that manage to get in the house.

If they fly, crawl, hop around or anything else, Pico is there to catch them and eat them. Got spiders? No problem -- Pico slaughters those, too. Some of you folks may think its nasty that the cat eats the bugs she catches, but that's fine with me. I don't care if she eats the bugs or crushes them, opens the front door and tosses them outside -- I just don't want to deal with the things. She's a full service bug killer, see?

So Pico is a meanie-head and doesn't get along with our kids or our other pets. So what? She does her part to cut down on the bugs around here and that makes her OK in my book.

Besides, my wife likes her and the cat does have her charms. There's something to be said for a cat that shows up, gets petted for about five minutes and then hides for the rest of the day.