Here at Cat Whisker Studio we are occasionally plagued by pests. Oh, foolish, foolish mice that poke their wee heads up at CWS. We have Chloe, an old mouser who now only watches the fun of the two younger cats. In her younger years, nary a mouse would dare darken our doorstep for fear of Chloe’s lightning quick reflexes and her dogged (excuse the term) determination. She has passed the mouser mantle to Coco Puff, who catches but won’t share. At least, with me. After her prey was caught and dutifully teased, Chloe used to hand the mouse over, dead or alive, so I could dispose of said visitor. Coco Puff doesn’t understand the art of sharing and if I go near her prize, she grabs it and heads for cover. I usually end up moving major furniture before I can retrieve the mouse.
Occasionally flies are fodder for play here at the studio. The cats will chase and jump and, yes, eat the flies. Perhaps flies are good training for catching birds. Birds are a rare catch. Chloe also used to be a great jumper and could grab a bird out of the air, seven feet off the ground. But as I said, she just watches now. Our other older cat, Leo, never brought home anything that Chloe hadn’t already caught for him–except perhaps the blind baby mole that he carried up the back steps so proudly one day many summers ago. He literally swaggered and paraded it around, making sure any and all humans in the area saw it. No one had the heart to take it from him even though he had no intention of eating it; indeed, the thought never occurred to him. Eventually, when he had shown off enough to his liking, he put it down somewhere outside, forgot about it, and came in for his bowl of crunchies.
In case anyone doubts it by these reminiscences, I frown on the cats indiscriminately killing anything around and about my studio. But cats will be cats. If I can get to the creature–bird or mouse–while it is still alive, I try to wrestle its freedom from the feline jaws and revive it as best as possible. Even the occasional small rabbit has been saved. But there is one creature that I wish the cats could and would hunt: the ant. They plague us each spring, coming in hundreds, both the small sugar ants (not as sweet as they sound) and the large carpenter ants, who apparently know ant bait when they see it and are very good at walking around six traps to get to the trash can in the kitchen area. At this time of year, I might look down to see cat kibble making its away across the floor as if by magic, while two or three big ants are situated under it, working hard as a team. The two young cats show an interest when the ants first show up but after a day or so of tracking, they ignore the ants completely. Ants are not fun like flies. There is no challenge and no payoff. Our full-figured young tuxedo cat, Sabrina, did try to eat one last year, which inevitably led to my having to extract sharp ant pincers from the inside of her lower lip–or where her lip would be if cats had lips. She has learned that ants are not for eating.
I am thinking of trading one cat for an anteater; it seems like a fair trade to me, if I can find someone who owns one and who is plagued by mice. Right now, the ants are carrying my chair away from the keyboard, so I must end this with one last . . .
UPDATE:
Yesterday, which was the day after this post, a pair of ducks came to the back of the studio. Chloe must not have liked the references I made to her age and to her letting the younger cats do the hunting.
Visitors from the nearby pond.
Chloe spotted them from the deck.
Forget sitting this one out!
Seeing they were too big to eat, she chased them off.