Neighbour cat brought me another mouse this evening. She has all kinds of patterns. Pondering if this will be a new ritual of hers. Wondering about tomorrow evening.
Once, upon a hot midsummer's eve, as we left our house wide open to entice any breeze our way, my cat of those times began to wail from directly outside our door. He was obviously jumping right outside our door. Higher and higher he jumped and belted forth with a desperate, grunting wail with each jump. From all the anxiety obvious in his grunting, I had the impression that he was trying to fly or something - he was jumping very high! I had two good ears at that time and I could finely discern the origin of sounds. My wife was almost asleep, further along than I was, in front of our night time movie, when she began to kick me into curiosity about the cat's odd sounds and behavior.
As I was reaching deep within myself to mine for the ability to stand from almost being in deep sleep myself, the cat comes bounding into the room with a muffled war cry rattling from his throat. My first, incoherent thought, was that he was somehow hurt, but he immediately pounced on my chest with a kind of victorious pride, head and prey held high, then he dropped a heavy mass onto my chest.
I know that some social cats (such as those that have become domesticated) bring live prey to their leaders as a gift and as a way of showing off their hunting skills. I was immediately repulsed, knowing what I know, being startled into wakefulness from near sleep, to have to deal with yet another gift from the cat - RIGHT NOW?? REALLY? NOW!!!
I was expecting it to be a huge pigeon from the weight he slammed on me, but then as I touched it I had an image of pigeons always going to roost well before sundown. There us no way a pigeon would be out flying at night. Pigeons will allow themselves to be captured or killed before they attempt to fly in darkness, usually.
Next thing I felt was two large, wet wings hitting me in the face as this fucking huge BAT, caught by my cat and dropped on my chest, began to try to escape - of course my cat grabbed it instantly and held it down on my chest. That is when I became aware of the unusually strong smell that bat urine gives off as my chest became warm with wetness.
... quite a bit more to this, but seeing my wife go from zero to flailing backwards at a velocity approaching the speed of sound away from this "gift" from the cat finished waking me up to the horror of what I had to deal with. A terrified bat flapping around the bedroom, continually wetting itself and everywhere it tried to fly, shitting these little lethal thumbnail sized grenades and a hunter cat determined to make his catch a good one ...
It was a long night.
