Damn you cat!

While spending an evening with friends, one of their little critters, Mimi did her usual patrol around the perimeter.

Very sweet cat, loves interacting with people. As much as she likes snuggling on someones lap and purring away contentedly, she also likes getting outside to prowl around her hunting grounds. They had tried to keep her indoors, but when she adopted them she had already been an outdoor cat for a year. Not much hope for keeping her inside at that point.

 On top of the neighbours shed.

After a while she came trotting back along the fence and oh look, she has something in her mouth.

Oh look, it’s a bird. Damn you cat!

She catches loads of mice, and kills them very quickly, which everyone is happy enough about. But she’ll also chase birds, and despite having a little jangly thing on her collar, manages to nab one occasionally. She seems to really enjoy batting them around like she’s playing badminton. The claws don’t seem to come out, and when we’ve rescued a bird, like now, there aren’t ever any bite wounds on it. Whether anything is damaged internally, don’t know, can’t tell. We suspect this one was just on the verge of flying, and that she actually grabbed it right out of a nest, or that had fallen to the ground in a fledgling attempt to fly.

She sat there for a while trying to figure out what had happened to her prey.

She looked mad and skulked off under the foliage. After a few minutes of sulking, she took off again in the direction she had come. Damn you cat!


Fortunately she returned empty mouthed. The bird we put up in the branches of a tree and hoped for the best. The next day it was gone, so here’s hoping it survived and flew off.


I know cats have a brain the size of a walnut and they’re just fulfilling their biological imperative, but damn you cat, leave the birds alone. Arguing that she should be kept inside is great and all, but the way she howls when she hasn’t been let out in a day seems to indicate that’s not so feasible. I had a cat that was an indoor cat when I was younger, and it worked cause he’d never been let outside. The Rubicon has already been crossed when it’s already lived outside full time for a year.