Feline Gifts
Allyson and I have taken to feeding a couple of the semi-feral neighborhood cats. They tend to come by at about the same times each day now, begging for food and trying to avoid letting us touch them. As time has worn on, they’ve gotten a lot less skittish around us, and one of them even tries to walk in to see Tux sometimes when we open the door.
Last night, when I got home from work, they had presented me with clear evidence that they had accepted me as a friend. You see, they left a bat’s head on my front doorstep as a thank you for all the food I’d been giving them. The bat’s head was roughly the size of a dime, and they’d obviously chewed off the head right off the body (which never made it to my door step).
I know that I’m a cat person because my first and only reaction to this whole thing was to be really excited that our little outside kitties think so highly of us. After a lifetime of being surrounded by cats that my family tamed out of the wild, I understand that this is a high compliment from any active predator. Allyson, however, was royally freaked out by the whole thing. In fact, she and Jen could say little beyond “Ewwww! Ewwww!” for the next ten minutes or so after we came in the apartment.
Do they not realize how hard it would be for a cat to catch a bat? I mean, this took real dedication or just pure dumb luck on the part of our little urban predators. Bats don’t walk around on the ground for cats to pounce on. Personally, knowing that bedbugs (or at least their closely related insect brethren “bat bugs”) often follow bats around, I’m hoping that our feline posse kills off every one of them execution style.
I think we need to name one of the outside kitties Ozzy.