Our unpredictable cat, Ness, loves to hunt. Showing we humans his prize, particularly the unexpected which would catch us unaware, was a highlight for him. One could almost detect a certain sparkle in his eyes or imagine a smile on his face in the course of these occasions. Evenings were his prime time for hunting. However, he would want to be inside the house relaxing and sleeping by 10 pm.

One fall night around 9 pm there was a muffled ‘meow’ at the door. Automatically opening the door to let him inside, I glimpsed something out of the ordinary about his mouth. Upon second glance I realized it was a bird! By this time he was halfway down the stairs into the basement. Yelling to my husband something about a bird as I was hurrying down the stairs, persuaded him to hurry in the same direction.

Arriving downstairs, we witnessed the cat catching the winged creature in mid-flight, dropping to the floor, releasing his ‘toy’, and re-catching it. Realizing this was a game, my husband, acting on instinct, ran to grab the bird when it was free to fly. He missed, startling the cat. Ness took a second or two to get his wits about him to go after his prey, where it was 7 feet or so off the floor. Gathering all his strength, that cat managed to hurl himself to a height in order to hit the bird with his front paws—hard enough to knock it to the floor. My husband was ready. He grabbed the defenseless creature, ran up the stairs, out the door, and opened his hand to let it freely fly away. Being semi-stunned, it took several seconds to make flight. As it flew away, we humans realized we were very glad to have the bird out of our house.

Ness, however, spent the rest of that night in the basement searching for his prize. The Bird had lost feathers during the fracas and down sticks to carpet and upholstery like glue. We thought all the evidence was entirely vacuumed, but periodically Ness would come out of the basement with a piece of down stuck somewhere on his furry body. From that day forward, whenever he was outside and ‘meowed’ to have the door opened, I made sure his mouth was empty before he gained entry into the house.