A Traumatizing Cat Fight

For months we have had a grungy stray cat hanging around our apartment complex. A calico cat whose owners left it behind when they moved. It runs in our homes when we open the doors, it poops on our patio furniture and all over the lawn and in the flower pots. It is your typical alley cat and I hate alley cats. To top it all off, we now have a white alley cat who found our apartment complex and is now trying to oust "Scrapy," (this is the name the children in the complex have given to the original Calico cat).

Today was the first day that my children saw two alley cats fight. Well, they actually only heard the cats fight, but it was VERY loud because they were fighting on our porch. All of the sudden we all heard the two cats start screaming and bouncing off all of our patio furniture. I have seen and heard many alley cat fights so it didn't phase me, but I turned to look at my children's faces and it was priceless. They looked at me as if a human being had just been mangled. They were terrified. Alexis ran to the door to see what was happening and Carter cautiously peeked around her only after he felt it was safe to do so.

The neighborhood kids who feed the cats quickly came to the rescue of Scrapy and broke up the scuffle. We went back in our house and I didn't think much more of it until Carter woke up tonight at 12:35 a.m. Here was our conversation:

Me: "Carter what are you doing up? It is the middle of the night. Let me take you back to bed."
Carter: (mumbling and still 95% asleep) "White cat is mean"
Me: "What?... What did you say?... Come on, back to bed."
Carter: "The white cat is mean... he tried to beat up Scrapy today"
Me: "I know"
Carter: "That is why I want to stay inside all tomorrow"

I guess this was a pretty traumatizing cat fight for Carter.