2 posts tagged “cat”

Seriously.
(A quick warning to the squeamish - you might want to stop here.)

Okay, so today started out pretty normal, with the plan of hanging out with a friend and watching cartoons. After we picked her up and got ourselves some foodstuffs, we came home and had lunch outside (because it was nice) and then went upstairs for some toony goodness. Brian stayed outside to do some repotting and to let the cat have some more playtime in the lawn.
After a bit Brian comes upstairs, brings the cat in, goes back out to lock up and then returns. We're in here making some DVDs, and we hear "Bran, come over here! Hurry!" coming from the living room. I'm thinking, "Oh no, Bentley is having some terrible seizure!" (the kitty has feline epilepsy) and Valerie and I go running into the living room.
Turns out, there is a dead bird next to Bun-Bun's cage. Not a chickadee, but not robin-sized, either. Inbetween, so it's a medium-sized bird, I would say, in a rather drab grey/brown. Brian was afraid he would have to wrestle the cat away from it, hence his calling out. Luckily, Bentley wasn't that interested and wandered towards the kitchen. The bird was semi-wrapped up in the mat we keep in front of the door.
Anyway, I grab the paper towels and Brian picks the poor thing up and takes it outside. I'm thinking Bentley killed a bird - His first! Normally when he manages to get his paws on them he remembers that he doesn't know what to do with them, and immediately lets them go. Moles and mice fare... Otherwise.
I'm half-congratulating the Mighty Hunter when Brian returns and states there is no way the cat could have brought it in the house. He had carried Bentley upstairs. The bird was big enough Brian would have surely noticed if Bentley had caught one outside. He's a curious kitty, and has to be carefully watched because we don't have a full fence. Also, Brian had looked it over once he got it outside. It did not look like a "cat kill". No blood, no matted feathers wet with saliva, no punctures... What's stranger, it was stone cold and stiff with rigor mortis. It had to have been there a while, and it was totally intact. Cats don't do that; we've all seen our share of kitty kills, and agreed that it did not look like a cat kill.
Well, when did it get in the house? We often leave windows open at night because of the heat, so it might have gotten in at night, but Bentley was in bed with us all last night. I know this because I recall him getting onto the bed shortly after we did, and I accidentally kicked him at various hours and he protested by sinking his claws into my feet. He is the kind of cat that will honestly sleep in the bed all night long, if only to cause us humans discomfort by taking up most of the bed. We only leave the upstairs windows open a crack, but occasionally we'll forget to close the kitchen window above the sink, or the one in our pantry, and both are very large and bird-friendly openings when left that way.
I think I left the pantry window open.
Besides, anyone who knows our kitty knows that if at all possible, he kills his prey via drowning in his waterdish. Sounds sadistic, but we've seen it done to silverfish and moths. We know he's done this to a mouse once, because we found it in the basement (which was dry) in a little puddle sans bites or scratches. Hence why we sometimes refer to Bentley as "The Baptist".
The bird was two feet from a half-full water dish. This was clearly not the work of The Baptist.
There's no evidence of a head-on collision with the wall. (I've seen those, and they ain't pretty) Well, the only other thing in the house that could have killed it was the bunnies. We kind of looked at each other at this realization, then looked at the rabbits. "No," we said, "They couldn't have... Well, actually, THESE rabbits..." *nervous laughter*
I then decided to take a look at the little tufts of grey fur that was near the mat that I had meant to sweep up this morning, but had decided to let be.
It was actually grey feathers mixed with grey fur.
Grey fur.

Bun-Bun.

Of course! This explained the intact condition AND the location of the bird. He was in the corner, near the entrance to Bun's box.
Just to be sure, I pet both the bunnies and got a "fur sample" from the both of them and compared it to the fuzzy, feathery mess.
Yep, it had to be Bun-Bun.
You see, Bun is very territorial, especially when it comes to his box. Bentley has tried on several occasions to investigate the interiors of the bun cages, and he immediately regretted it. I've also seen Bun-Bun bitchslap (seriously, it's the best word for it) various small birds, chipmunks and squirrels that decided to wander up to him while he was in the lawn just to say hello. He'd never killed them, but they were stunned for a small period of time. I then recalled hearing a little lagomorph factiod that the full force of a rabbit's hind leg kick can kill a cat or a small dog if they get it in the right spot on their head.
Birds, I know, are nowhere near as sturdy as that.
The best we figure is the bird, having found its way into our home, might have perched on the wire top of the bun cages and discovered the yummy smell of bun grain, which might have been what the bird was looking for. Bun-Bun likes to spend his nights stretched out on the living room floor next to his girl, and he's usually facing the cages.
Bun-Bun probably saw the intruder in his cage, growled, and leapt to the attack. His favored method of attack is punches and kicks. He doesn't bite or slash with his claws; that's Sanjuro's (our girl bun) area of expertise. The bird probably stumbled out of the cage and died not far from the door (right where the mat is), or was jumped before he even made it inside and kicked to the curb, as it were. Poor guy never stood a chance!
So yeah... Tim was right. Listen to Tim.

Believe this or not, but honestly, all the proof I needed was when I held a feather to Bun's nose and asked, "Was this YOUR doing?" and he gave me that enigmatic smug look (the one normally reserved for cats) and ground his teeth at me. For those not well-versed in Bunny Lingo, that's the rabbit equivalent of evil laughter.
That's my bunny! ^_^

Later!
Crazed

(PS - Before you call me a horrible monster, I do feel bad for the bird... But at least Bun-Bun got him before The Baptist did!)

Okay, so most of you know that I have two bunnies that rule the house; King Bun-Bun and Queen Sanjuro.
Well, their Court Jester is a cat.  Bentley the cat, who is either a full-blooded Maine Coon or a half, I'm not sure which.  But he's huge, wieghs more than 25 pounds, and is all muscle.  Here's a little picture of him so you know what I'm talking about when I say "Huge".

The Bentley

That is a Meter-Stick, and he's gotten bigger since then.  He's also lost his winter fluff and tummy, so what he's lost in wieght he's gained in length/height.
Bentley is a big boy.  He is also a daddy's boy, and spends at least two hours of each day on top of Brian.
Okay, so you get that he's huge.  Luckily he knows he's big and will test the weight-bearing capacity of things before he just goes leaping all over the place.  He's also pretty smart, and he has small thumbs that he uses quite a bit.
Okay, enough about the kitty.  What did he do?
I will need to explain the situation, first.  Two nights ago we had a power outage around 11:30 or Midnight, somewheres in there.  I was nowhere near tired, but Brian was, so I decided to take the Pokemon Fire Red and the DS into bed to play until I got sleepy, and Brian feel asleep.  Because we had no power, the fans weren't going and it was all hot and humid and sticky.  So I opened the bedroom windows and hoped for a cooling cross-breeze.  Our windows are small, but right across each other, so the wind can do that.  One window, the one above the dresser, has a screen, and the other, above Bentley's perch, does not.  Now, there's not much outside that window aside from the gutter and a tree, the branches of which can hardly support squirrels, much less a mutant kitty.  The other screened window faces our neighbor's roof; their house is literally three feet from ours, maybe less.
A quick architectural note about our house - We live in a three-story duplex, the top "half".  The bottom floor is home to our neighbor, the second floor is our living room/kitchen/study/bathroom, and the third floor is bedrooms, so it's a big, TALL house, especially since the bottom two floors have 9 to 10-foot ceilings.  If anyone, say, a kitty, were to fall from a third-floor window they'd be falling 30 feet straight down.
So now you have "the set-up", as it were.
After playing Pokemon for a while I blew out the candle I had lit next to the bed and fell asleep, with both windows open.  Brian woke me up later (it was around 4am) and I was groggily aware that the hallway light was on.  I snapped awake an instant later when Brian said that the cat wasn't in the house.  I got up, found my robe, and checked through the house twice myself to see if he was right, and he was.  The cat wasn't ANYWHERE.  The only way he could have gotten out of the house was through that window, but there was only the built-in brick gutter for him to walk on, and then 30 feet of nothing between that and the sidewalk! 0_o Oh noes.
I was in the spare bedroom upstairs, wondering if maybe he had walked on the gutter to the front of the house, where the roof slopes to the point where he can get on it and climb to the very very top.  I was calling his name out of the windows, and a small part of me wanted to cry because I had left the window open.  But most of me was trying to figure out what the Hell happened, with the Mission Impossible theme playing in my head and everything.  The worst-case scenario was either him splattering on the pavement below, or getting murderously attacked by the squirrels that like to play on our roof.  Best-case was that he was on our roof, and would come in on his own.  Brian then came running up the stairs, "He's on the neighbor's roof!"

A Bonsaist & His Cat

Sure enough, there he was outside the screened window, and gave us one of his plaintive little meows.  He had the guilty look of a little kid who had broken a window, but who had had fun doing it and was still pretty amused.
We found a screwdriver and pried (read:broke) the screen out of the window.  But the window opening is really thin - Hardly wider than the cat, and we didn't want him to make that jump over dead space into such a small opening.  I found a plank from a yet-to-be-assembled bookshelf, but it was too short.  I went looking for something else thin but long and sturdy enough when Brian said he was in!  Yay!
Bentley had made the leap, but almost didn't make it.  Apparently he had gotten a good hold with his front legs, dug his claws into the sill, and then pulled himself in.  Given that our window is three feet above the height of our neighbor's roof, and there's a three foot distance across...  Bentley made a very exact four and a half foot jump with minimal problems.  Top that, James Bond!
Granted, he can do a standing poing of six feet straight up, but still...  I am impressed.
But the kitty was fine - annoyed that we were fussing over him, but fine - and we managed to bend the screen mostly back into shape and get back in the window.  Then, we went back to sleep.
But I remembered to close the window this time.

Later!
Crazed