My three cats are trying to scare me with their low-budget scary movie – and it's not even Halloween

 I'm not going to write about autumn garden chores today, because here is an even more pressing issue to deal with: The cat-tailed members of our household seem to be trying to send me straight into Cloud Cuckooland. The three conspirators include my current chief garden staffer, Tessa the Vague, a 14-year-old calico; Abigail, a black and white longhair, and – this will come as a shock – Benjamin BadKitten, my former garden chief. Abigail is as old as Tessa but still has all her own mental marbles, plus most of the aggies, glassies and swirlies that Tessa has lacked from birth. Benjamin is a black and brown Maine coon cat with a cunning mind and a penchant for trouble, who had been shunning Tessa since I demoted him.

With Tessa's rise to glory, Abigail, never a social cat, abandoned her favorite napping spot in the front yard, under the phlox, and avoided Tessa in the house, too. So I was delighted – at first –when I saw all three cats huddled together near the bird bath in the flower garden on a recent sunny day. With their paws tucked under them, they looked like three furry loaves of bread, pumpernickel, sourdough, and ham on rye (guess who's who.) I assumed that Benjamin and Abigail were trying to bring Tessa up to speed on basic garden orientation. (Up to speed for Tess means, “See that tall green thing with the petals on top? That's a clue. If you see some of those things around, you've probably found the flower garden, unless you took a wrong turn and ended up on Main Street, in front of a flower shop.”

After the bonding session in the garden, I expected peace among the cat tails. The next morning, I was working at my computer when I heard an unnerving crunching sound coming from under the bed. My stomach tightened as I crouched and found Abigail finishing a truly macabre brunch of feathered chickadee sushi. Abigail has never been a bird catcher. The last time she showed a hunter's instinct was a year ago, when she and her partner in crime, the BadKitten, ushered a live mouse into our home, via the cat door, and then lost the little critter. The mouse, who was faster and smarter than those two feline doofuses, roamed free overnight, until I found him the next morning in my closet, experiencing rigor mortis.

Now, after the chickadee sushi scene, Tessa has begun a new ritual of perching on the arm of my chair while I read or watch TV. She stares at me with unblinking, jade green eyes as blank as the marbles she does not possess. When I pet her, she purrs quietly and then makes an awkward trip from the chair arm onto my lap – where she sits, staring at me. She does not relax or purr again. She just stares. Maybe the pressure of her new responsibilities – finding the garden and keeping me company while I work – has pushed her to a Tessa version of catatonia, but she's not saying. She just sits on my lap and stares. I am feeling stalked.

After Abby and Tess creeped me out, each in her own special way, I actually told Benjamin that he had become The Good One, at least temporarily. My large BadKitten leaped athletically from the floor onto my lap, seeming to mock Tessa with his agility, and settled in, purring loudly and smugly. Benjamin didn't stare at me; he just arranged his considerable avoir dupois and shut his eyes. He was still sporting his halo late that evening, when I was reading alone in the living room and suddenly heard an odd clanking sound coming from the kitchen. When the sound repeated, I went to check – just in time to find Benjamin carrying a mouse trap,from which dangled a skinny gray tail, with the rest of the murdered little rodent attached. I shrieked for my husband, who has danced the mousetrap polka with Benjamin before He quickly disposed of that beastly cat's unfortunate trophy.

This is the fourth time my BadKitten has come home bearing identical gifts: a mousetrap plus a dead mouse. Each time he had the nerve to think we'd believe – what? That he bought a trap, baited it, and then lured a mouse into it? (Note to neighbors: Your mouse traps work well, but our cat steals them – and the mice they attract --from your yard. I am more sorry about this than you can imagine.)

So one cat's dormant hunter instincts have suddenly awakened, and another cat's dormant mind will never wake up, but she has developed a stalking fetish. The third cat appears periodically with dead, pre-trapped mice. And, as a denouement, after each act of bone crunching, lap stalking, or mousetrap retrieval, each cat gets sick. The BadKitten, I suspect, has directed every scene of this low-budget scary movie to drive me bananas enough to return him to power. Maybe I should just get a gerbil.