Neighbor cat?

View from the back deck.

I spied this lil' guy on one of my first ventures out since hurting my foot a month ago. He saw me and froze. We sort of sat across from each other, I on the deck and he on the fence, in a stand-off. I began calling to him in an effort to thaw him out, but got no love. Eventually, I was distracted by something and he took that opportunity to slink away. I'm not sure which house he's attached to, but I welcome his presence as maybe he'll make for a good rat repellent. Actual rat repellent seems to have no effect.

Mostly out of shot in the foreground of the cat pic is one of two massive lemon trees that stand in the back garden. The landlord won't allow us to use this space because 'previous tenants smoked out there' or some such bull. Given that we've a nice deck off the bedroom, I initially really didn't care if we could use the yard or not. Save for the citrus, it's just a small patch of cement at the back of the house. -no great shakes. I was, however, sorry to not be able to pick lemons whenever I wanted, but the landlord will occasionally leave a bundle of citrus in the mailbox, so that's really nice. Not so nice, however, are the rats who LOVE to eat citrus. Who knew? I'll occasionally find half eaten lemons on the deck along with bits of rat poop. In my mind, if I could just pluck all the juicy lemons off the trees, then the rats would have no reason to visit. Of course, the rats would probably just bring goodies from other gardens to nosh on out back al fresco. Maybe instead of laying out rat repellent I should put out catnip?