PORTAGE la PRAIRIE, MB – Even fresh batteries can’t keep the City’s monitoring pigeons out of the grasp of Billy Neepawa’s cats.

Since the City of Portage la Prairie installed new batteries in its flock of surveillance pigeons Neepawa’s compliment of five cats have taken at least seven of the new birds.

City Plans On Changing Batteries In Pigeons & Installing Baby Pigeons

“Oscar has been the worst,” Billy Neepawa shared.  “He is bringing me a pigeon about every second day.  He’s a little bugger.”

Neepawa’s Oscar is the most aggressive of the clowder, something attributed to an injured tail and fur graft Oscar underwent several years ago.

“He’s really gone after the birds since he healed from his surgery,” Neepawa explained.  “We had to graft some fur onto his tail and it seems to have really sparked the predator in him.

City officials have issued Neepawa a warning to have his cats refrain from damaging the monitoring pigeons.  The new flock of baby pigeons have been impacted by Neepawa’s cats along with several traffic incidents.

Maintenance employees are now repairing all the damaged birds and hope to have them back into circulation by mid-summer.

“Sooty has grabbed a couple of the baby pigeons but I don’t mind because I get tired of the City spying on me and my cats.”

Neepawa works for an arms-length organization charged with monitoring the terror threat for the City of Portage la Prairie and he feels the need for surveillance drone pigeons seems excessive.

“The battery powered pigeons aren’t really helping from a terror control standpoint.  I’ve been monitoring the threat of terrorism against the city and we’ve never had any.  I think they just want the pigeons so they and listen in on regular Portagers to get the latest gossip.”

Portage Hires Neepawa To Assess & Monitor Terror Threat – Level Set At TANGERINE

The City insists the pigeons provide a valuable service in keeping Portage safe and have no plans to reduce the birds work load.

“My other cats, Molly, Smudge and Alfie all like to chatter when the pigeons come by,” Neepawa said.  “Alfie is too fat to jump and can barely catch lunch.  Smudge has some issue with his anus and can only run a few steps before he has to lick himself.  Molly is a just a sweetie and doesn’t hunt anything.  Last week she caught a fly in the kitchen and just held it in her mouth until it flew away again.”

Neepawa’s clowder of cats has a few new members as he has taken pity on a number of new cats that have started hanging out around his house.

“Charlie and Milo showed up about a week ago and Angel decided to live here over a month ago.  It’s getting pricey to have them all fixed and to get their shots but what are you going to do?”

The shed in Neepawa’s garden is also home to a family of skunks.  “They smell a bit but after the kits are weaned they all leave so there is no issue, basically.”

Raccoons also like to slip into his sunroom and eat the cat food as well as Neepawa’s lunch from time to time.

Photo Credit: Stephanie Young Merzel 

Notice to readers: click here to read the full disclaimer and disclosure and significant legal information.  Billy Neepawa is a fictional character along with his clowder of cats.  A clowder means a group of 5 or more cats.  Neepawa has a lot of cats but he bares to resemblance to any real person from Portage la Prairie or anywhere else.  No one would have that many cats unless they had issues.  Neepawa is a very likable sod of a man and while odd, he is a productive member of society.  But again, we remind you Neepawa is not real.  That is the person not the place.  There is a place called Neepawa that is real but that has little to do with story or any others on this site.  Neepawa translates to the “land of plenty”.  We think that is a nice sounding name for a place and so we borrowed the word for our characters last name.  Have a nice day.