Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2005
Dear Diary:

The instinct to hunt is hard wired into cats, but the ability to hone that instinct into the ability to actually catch something, well, that is a whole other ball game.

From the moment they first set their paws outside, Binky and Savannah have been desperate to catch something. I have seen the two of them rocketing many, many times after squirrels, chipmunks and mice. They have yet to catch anything.

We humans have a lot of status symbols in our world, everything from palaces and yachts through to jewels, but for cats there's really only one status symbol: The Dead Thing.

When our cat Zubby was a kitten he spent endless hours tagging along with Lily, a tiny tabby cat who was an amazing hunter. From Lily Zubby learned the art of the hunt and every day he leaves at least two or three Dead Things of the rodent family on the walkway in to our home.

To a cat's eyes Dead Things are bling. They want to flash their bling, have their bling admired, and so they leave it in a place where their humans can't miss it.

Zubby's endless ability to create cat bling has turned him into Obi-Wan Kittyobi as far as Binky and Savannah are concerned. They try to hang with him and learn the ways of The Force, so that they, too, can use It to get the bling.

Zubby, of course, does not want them around because they go nuts when they see potential Dead Things, giving Zubby's intended victims the heads up they need to escape. His annoyance with his two acolytes is pretty funny to watch.

This morning as I was heading out to the dentist, I had to walk through the Valley of the Dead Things�Zubby got two fat mice and left them prominently displayed on the walkway for my admiration. Because I am a delicate blossom, I do not dispose of the Dead Things. That I leave to the spousal unit.

I called back over my shoulder to the spousal unit that there were some mice for him to dispatch if he had a free moment and motored off to my appointment.

The spousal unit said when he went outside to get the mice, Binky sauntered out the door behind him. Bink couldn't see the Dead Things because the spousal unit was ahead of him, blocking his view. The first he saw of the Dead Things was the spousal unit picking them up by their tails.

The spousal unit said Binky stopped in his tracks and looked at him with an OMIGAWD expression. Then the spousal unit realized that the cat thought he had caught the mice, that the spousal unit, like Zubby, knew how to use The Force. Laughing, the spousal unit tossed the Dead Things into the woods.

Binky was utterly aghast. Not only could the spousal unit catch the bling, he had so much bling that he threw it away and didn't even play with it or eat it. Binky raced into the woods where the spousal unit had tossed the Dead Things and eventually found one of them. He proceeded to bring it back to the walk way where he played with it and then eventually ate it.

Yep, the cat who constantly turns up his nose at the cat food I buy joyously chowed down on a disgusting Dead Thing.

Go have cats.

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer: 1259.92 miles. blue ribbonDone. Now I can log me some of them there Road Runners, eh?


Goal for 2005: 1,250 miles - 2000 kilometers



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