I’ll go first.
When Kaia was younger, she was very, very feisty. She played aggressively and hard. She is also a very smart cat. She had a favorite toy, which we called “Ball” which was a rubber ball with mylar streamers. She would work herself so hard chasing that thing that she could barely walk and she would pant for the next half hour, if we let her. Usually we would put Ball away before she got that worn out though. We had to put Ball away, because if she found it she would have eaten it. We also had to keep moving the hiding place, because she would eventually find it. She learned how to open a kitchen drawer to get it out, for example.
When you got Ball out, she knew. I don’t know if she could hear it, or smell it, or what, but if you put it in your pocket or under your shirt, and came into the room, she woudl run over to you, meowing and meowing and sniffing you all over looking for Ball.
When you put Ball away, she would follow you around a bit, complaining, and then she would go into wherever you had been, and meow and meow looking for it. For a good 20 minutes.
She was an excellent hunter…the sort of cat who would chase the mailman if we let her outside. I bet she could catch birds mid-flight 9 out of 10 tries. Fortunately, all she ever got to catch was moths.
To illustrate her methods and skill, here is a comparison:
Ding and Kaia were on the floor in front of the couch. I had one of those “fishing rod” toys, a long stick with a string and a bunch of feathers at the end. I’d wave it around first for one, then the other, back and forth so they both got turns. Ding isn’t the brightest cat in the universe. She is very, very sweet, but a bit awkward and a bit … well the first part about her not being bright is dead on. When it was her turn, she would flail wildly, up on her hind legs, standing up batting in all directions, leaping into the air, twisting around, falling over, and being generally and ineffectually acrobatic. I think she may have caught it once or twice total. She had a great time, though, and she had no idea that she sucked.
Contrast that with Kaia’s playing: She would crouch down a bit, totally still. Just her eyes and sometimes her head moving to follow the toy, no matter how excitingly we made it fly and flop around. She would wait until she was ready, then she would move, like a spring uncoiling, lightning fast and deadly accurate. The next thing anyone knew, she had the thing in her mouth and was trying to drag it off under the coffee table. It was neccessary to go and pry it out of her mouth, because if you pulled on the string, she would clamp down and back away from you, never letting go. She broke the string several times doing this, and once the plastic rod even snapped. She caught the toy almost every time, in one move.
She also liked to play tag. The other cats didn’t like this game, because she scared the crap out of them, so she played it with us. She would initiate the game by coming up to you, then running away, and looking back to see if you were following. Then you chased her, fast as you could, to the other end of the house. She would flee, and usually go right to some corner. Then she would turn around and pause. This was your cue to run. You would run to the other end of the house, and she chased hot on your heels. When you were cornered, you turned around and paused, and she ran away. She could play this game for hours.
She was pure muscle, built more like a wild cat than a domestic cat. She was strong and tough. She liked to beat up dogs (we occassionally had dogs at our house, and once we dog-sat a german shepherd/chow mix for a month and she trapped that poor thing in the kitchen more times than I can count) and she would break toys within days of them being purchased.
…but then she had a gentle side.
She knew what babies were. When we rescued two kittens from a nearby parking garage, she was gentle with them. When we got a baby ferret, she absolutely went nuts. She LOVED Spot. Spot LOVED her. They were best buddies. Spot liked to roughhouse. Kaia liked to roughhouse. Kaia was strong. Spot was unbreakable. It was a match made in heaven.
But Spot was a baby, and was a lot smaller than Kaia. We were amazed at how she toned down her play to deal with Spot… she totally pulled her punches, she ran slower, she let Spot “get her” sometimes when she could easily have gotten away. Spot would go nuts as ferrets do… hopping around backwards and flopping around making little ferret noises.
Probably the most disturbing part was that Kaia would carry Spot around. Ferrets, as you know, are very flexible. They tend to be very limp when carried. Dangling from a cat’s mouth, they look fairly dead. Even worse was that Kaia sometimes picked up Spot by the scruff of his neck… but other times she picked him up by his throat. Spot didn’t really care one way or the other. He didn’t mind much, though. It was quite disconcerting to see Kaia stroll through the room with a limp ferret hanging from her mouth by its throat, though…
…
Nowadays, Kaia is about 10 years old. She has fattened up, mellowed out, and settled down. She is still strong, still accurate, but she likes to lay around more than chase things. She has become very snuggly and demanding. If she wants to snuggle with you, she wants to snuggle NOW and you drop what you are doing and snuggle or else.
Hrm. That came out a whole lot longer than I intended. I was mainly gonna write about the thing with Spot, but I wanted to give some back story. Heh.