Did I ever tell you about the time Tabs caught a bird…on his leash!? Maybe I have, but I don’t think I told you all the sordid details. You see, we were just wrapping up our morning walk. It was a good day. The sun was out. It was clear and warm. Tabs was feeling friskier and more playful than usual. He even climbed one of the oak trees about 10 feet up before plopping back down.
As we were walking back to the front door, Tabs was leading me like usual on his leash until suddenly I saw was a flash of movement in front of me. I look over to my right, and there’s Tabs about 10 feet away with something fluttering IN HIS MOUTH!
By the time it registers with me that it’s a bird in his mouth, and I say “Tabs, no! Stop!” and rush over to him, it’s too late. He darts behind me with it still in his mouth, trying to keep it away from me, but the wings are no longer flapping. It’s just hanging there limply. I think it was a baby sparrow because it was that time of year when we find a lot of nests and hear the baby birds chirping.
I pull the slack from his leash, and Tabs reluctantly sets the small bird down on the concrete. He looks almost as freaked out as I do, like he couldn’t believed what just happened either, like “Whoa! I can’t believe I just caught a bird! Did you see that? Wow, I did not expect that to happen today!”
Of course, the bird was no longer with us, but at least it met its end quickly.
There were other times, too, when Tabs almost caught birds on his leash. One time he leaped so high, the leash pulled straight out of my hand, and he swiped a bird so forcefully that he knocked it out of the sky. Thankfully, it bounced a few times like someone skipping a rock and made it back into the air and got away.
We always joked that Tabs was a natural born birder — a veritable ninja tabby. Rodents were definitely not his forte… Remind me to tell you about the time we had a rat in the kitchen (!), and Tabs wouldn’t get anywhere near it, but he would chirp and chatter at birds for hours and hours at the window.
Perhaps appropriately, some of his favorite kitty modeling ad campaigns were bird themed… 🙂
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
Our cat is a birder, and as he roams the gardens free at night, he sometimes brings them back home as “present”. Not my favorite way to start a morning.
Our cat, Alvin, is an indoor cat but when he was younger he was always trying to dart out the front door, when he could. One time he got out and snagged a bird. He was just standing there looking at me like, “Yo, look what I got??? Can you believe it??”. When I went to grab him, he dropped it and, luckily, it was able to fly away.
One of our gals is a birder, too. She was a rescue and had to fend for herself in the wild for some time so she was able to jump and knock them out of the sky, too. Even without claws. She’s an indoor cat so it wasn’t often that she’d dart out the door and go birding but, really, seeing it once was enough for me. Our big boy is a king mouser. The Hubs’ first reaction was to yell and chase him and tell him to drop it. I was like “no, you have to praise him – you want him to catch anything that makes it’s way inside”. He’s a coward with people but a great hunter. Our 3rd kitty is wonderful with people but the only thing she’ll chase is light (reflection from a watch, etc).
We have a tiny, brick back yard in the UK. My Siamese Freya still managed to catch and kill a baby bird and brought it in the house dripping blood everywhere…
What did her loving Mama do? Fled upstairs shrieking to her husband to “DO something!”