I returned home from a long and fruitful day at work to find: feathers. Everywhere. And a very self-satisfied kitty. I generally keep all the windows closed except for the bathroom one that’s open about 1 inch. The bird must have entered there.
Walking around the downy devastation I felt like Humperdinck imagining its reenactment. There was… a mighty duel. They were both masters. The loser… is nowhere to be found, save a single remaining foot, while the winner… curled up here on top of the stereo receiver. Where it is warm.
Many years ago, I worked for our local township newspaper. To say this was a small operation would be an understatement – the full-time staff was the Editor and I, and it was published out of the Editor’s basement. Now, don’t picture a nice, finished basement – no no, it was concrete block, exposed beams, and broken windows.
Now, those broken windows provided perfect entry and egress for Boots, the official cat of the Town News & Sampler. Very cute cat, and she adored me (like most cats, she had an irresistible attraction to cat-haters – yeah, I hated cats back then). In fact, she loved me so much, that she felt the need to constantly display her love. In the form of a dead bird, on the floor by my chair, every fricking morning.
Most mornings I’d think to check first, but there were plenty of fun mornings where I’d sit down, pull up to my computer, and <squish!>…step in a pile of dead sparrow. “Yeah, thanks Boots…I love you too”. And she’d sit there, purring contentedly, satisfied with her mighty hunting skills and basking with pride on a job well done.
Someone wanna remind me how it was that I’ve come to love cats? :dubious:
One night, in my old apartment, I had left the windows open for a little while to try and cool off some. Bed time rolled around so I closed all the windows and curled up with a good book. As I took my glasses off and got ready to turn off the lights, my cat comes prancing into the room with something in her mouth. She sat down next to the bed, laid it on the ground, and looked up at me like she was so proud of herself. As I reached for my glasses, wings unfurled from the lump of fur and the ground, and a bat flew across my bed squealing. I don’t think I have ever screamed so loud before or since!
Some years back, my wife and I got a new hot tub. I got the wiring done, built the deck around it, filled it with water, and heated it up. We waited until the little one was safely settled in her bed, grabbed a bottle of wine, and went out to enjoy the new hot tub.
Then my cat walked up on the deck by the hot tub. Was he carrying some dead critter to show off? No. He had a live pigeon! A big one, too. He proceeded to kill it and noisily eat it. Talk about killing the mood…
Poll for cats:
When you catch a mouse (inside the house), do you…[list=a]
[li]Kill and eat it ?[/li][li]Kill it and leave it for your human friends to find ?[/li][li]Carry it into the other room and let it go so you can chase it again ?[/li][/list]
Then there was the time one of 'em brought a live bird into the house and I spent all day trying to chase it back outside.
Back in the day, we let the cats outside for about an hour each morning. Once, when DeHusband was working late, I curled up in front of the TV but the cats wouldn’t come to the couch. Scattered about the room, they sat tensely staring at a spot beneath the coffee table. I get up to look and there is one very well-licked bird looking up at me. Still alive, no injuries, but just covered in cat slobber. I scream and call DeHusband telling him he has to come home. “For a bird? No.” So I carefully get it into a box and set it outside. The cats were furious that I’d taken away their toy.
Don’t get me started. Back when I had a cat door, I was a charter member of the Bird of the Week club. I’d come home to feathers ankle deep in the kitchen, or a bird perched on a door or lamp fixture, or the cat crouched by the fridge, angrily swishing her tail (that time, it was a mole, I believe).
Then I moved into the 150 year old house with the stone foundation that’s permeable not only to rain but to critters. There’d be weeks where every night the cat would catch a mouse in the basement, bring it all the way upstairs to the bedroom, and then release and noisily chase it around the room. Depending on my state of exhaustion, I’d either rescue the mouse or make a mental note to look for the body in the morning. The bad mornings were the ones where no body could be found.
The current cat shows no inclination to venture into the basement. I suspect I have biblical numbers of mice down there as a result.