Apropos of nothing, I’ve seen a few pet stores the have open displays of rabbits and/or guinea pigs, allowing customers to reach down and pet the animals. I’ve often wondered how the social dynamic would alter with the inclusion of one kitten.
I suggested it to a clerk once. She was not sufficiently intrigued to conduct the experiment.
I had an experience kind of similar to what Inigo Montoya describes. My ex and I had house full of animals, including five cats. The newest member of our feline brigade was Harley, a 15-pound, black and orange split-faced callico. Harley was by far the largest of our cats and could easily have been the alpha queen, but didn’t seem interested in the job. She just wanted to be left alone, for the most part, and managed to find ways to get into the upper level cabinets in the kitchen and even close the door behind her. She was also the only one who exhibited hunting behavior, stalking wadded up dish towels and feathery cat toys.
Another new member of our household was a Russian dwarf hamster, which our daughter named Mulan. The hamster had the standard small rodent habitat, which sat on a shelf in easy reach of the cats, but seemed to have a fairly sturdy latch. Harley spent a lot of time crouching right by the cage and was obviously quite interested in whatever was moving around inside, but we pretty much left her alone. “Cats will be cats.”
One day we arrived home to a disturbing sight. Harley was casually walking down the hall with Mulan dangling from her mouth. We managed to confliscate the body before our daughter could see it, and examined it surreptitiously. The poor little thing was dead, but there was not a mark on its body, nor did it seemed to have been damaged. We figured the hamster had probably died of fright. My wife put the little one to bed while I ran down the street to the pet store where we had bought Mulan – fortunately it was only a mile up the road. As luck would have it, two or three of Mulan’s siblings were still available for sale. I picked the one that looked the most like our dearly departed and took her home. Kizarvexilla, who was about 2, never noticed the difference.
Fast forward about 6 months. Once again we arrive home to find Harley casually awaiting us, Mulan II dangling from her mouth. This time, however, we were not in time to stop Kizarvexilla from witnessing the sight. As soon as she registered what it was she was seeing, Kizarvexilla began to shriek and howl, and Harley dropped her prize and ran off to seek shelter. Preparing ourselves for another hamster funeral, we examined the corpus dilicti. Wonder of wonders, it was alive and unharmed.
We never figured out how the cage door had gotten opened. Whether a case of human neglect, rodentine curiosity, or feline ingenuity, we cannot say. But we began securing the door with a twist-tie from then on, and it never happened again.