Seagulls

Tax Day 2009 - 4:40 p.m.

Again With the Bad Cats

The girls were at it again today. They caught a spotted towhee and brought it in to play with. I heard the excitement and took it away from them. I've always had a way with birds, they calm right down when I hold them. There hadn't been towhees at the feeder during the winter, and there have been quite a few of them in the last couple of weeks. I think they must be migrating through.

Maybe that's why the cats are being more successful in their hunting -- Kate has been complaining about the same phenomenon -- the passers-through don't know about the evil felines and aren't as cautious as the local birds.

I locked the girls in the house the rest of the day as a reward. I hope their little cat brains figure out this cause and effect.

Bird Pictures

I have two digital cameras. An Olympus point and shoot that I share with the Engineer and a Canon 20D that's mine. The Olympus is great for snap shots, it's what I mostly use for illustrating the blog, but you sure can tell the difference sometimes.

The Steller's jay was shot with the Olympus.

The house finch was taken with the Canon with a 300mm lens. They were about the same distance away.

No contest.

Scrub Jays

They Did It Again

Dang cats are in a bird hunting frenzy. One of them caught a scrub jay Saturday and brought it in. The Engineer and I tried to corner Sachi, who had the bird in her mouth, but she dropped it and it flew up to the highest part of the living room ceiling. The Engineer got out the latex gloves, butterfly net and step ladder again, but managed to fall off the step ladder and land on his bad knee. I caught the jay (barehanded, oh, the cooties!) and let it go outside.

Today I got home from the car repair and they had a house finch. I took that one away from them too. Then hurried to clean up the evidence and vacuum before I went out again to vote.This is getting really old, and I know the birds like it a whole lot less than I do.

Aspirations

What, you might wonder, brought this topic to mind. To be perfectly honest, my underwear.

Aspirations can be a good thing: aspiring to go to a good college can inspire a kid to make straight A's in high school. Aspirations can be a bad thing: aspiring to be rich and powerful can lead a person to lie, cheat and steal.

I used to have four finches:

a female society finch named Amouri,

a male zebra finch named BeepBeepBird,

a female green singing finch named Lovelorn

and a male green singing finch named Frustration.

It was a half sad La Cage aux Folles.

BeepBeep and Amouri were in love, they had a little nest and laid eggs which never hatched because the sweethearts were of different species. Lovelorn adored Frustration. Frustration had the hots for Amouri and totally ignored Lovelorn. Frustration would sit hunched on his perch, his back turned to Lovelorn, and glare at BeepBeep. You could tell by looking that in his birdy heart-of-hearts he aspired to be an eagle. To be an eagle so he could chomp up BeepBeep with one snap of his savage, hooked beak thus winning the heart of the fair Amouri.

Fortunately for BeepBeep and Amouri, Frustration's aspirations never came to fruition. Lovelorn eventually tired of Frustration's attitude and decided life as an old maid was not so bad. Frustration lived his entire life in a state of grumpiness.

The underwear? Well, today I wore a previously comfy old pair, but I guess they must have somehow sneaked a peak at a Victoria's Secret catalogue. They obviously had aspirations to become a thong. Dang undies kept trying to climb up my butt.

The Mighty Hunter

When I got home from the grocery store yesterday, the Engineer announced that he had caught a bird. One of the cats had brought it in, then both of them chased it all over the upstairs. He had been downstairs in his office (on the other side of the 3/4 bath from mine) when it happened, but it took him a few crashes to figure out they weren't just galloping.

We have a little loft over the master bedroom, but no way to access it yet. The bird had lighted on the loft railing. The cats were trying to leap from the top of the dresser to grab it, but their claws couldn't get purchase on the hard oak. They kept crashing back down onto the dresser, knocking everything off it.

When the Engineer realized what was going, he reacted in typical fashion.

First he assembled his tools: step stool, old bath towel, butterfly net, latex gloves(!?!)

He placed the stool on the floor below the bird. He donned the gloves and laid the towel on the bed nearby. Then he stepped up on the stool and scooped the bird into the butterfly net. He carried the bird in the net to the back door and let it fly. He didn't even need to use the towel.

He wanted to know what kind it was.

"Was it one of those little brown birds with the rosy colored head?" I asked.

"No."

"What color was it?"

"Uh, gray? It sat straight up."

"Was it blue on top and light gray underneath?"

"Yeah."

"Probably a scrub jay, we get lots of those at the feeder."

"Yeah, it was a scrub jay."

"Did it squalk and scream a lot?"

"No, it was quiet."

At that, I hoped the poor bird hadn't been too badly hurt because jays are nothing if not loud.

This morning I pointed out a scrub jay to him. He said, "It looked like that only smaller. It must have been a baby."

Not at this time of year.

I suspect the Mighty Hunter caught either a nuthatch or a junco.



Gotta admit, my favorite part
of the whole thing was the mental
image of him wearing latex
gloves to protect himself
from bird cooties.

Bad Cats - Again

I have lived with cats most of my adult life and have developed good cat ears. The Engineer, on the other hand, is close to cat deaf. This can be a very good thing as I can intercept them in activities that would get him all excited. The cats and I operate under that classic old philosophy of "What you don't know can't hurt me."

I hear their meows and know which cat is speaking, I hear the faint clink of a collar tag on porcelain and know that one of them is eating. The creak of the cat door lets me know one is coming or going. They purr from simple happiness and they purr to try to bribe their human to do something (they know her weak spots.) There is the horrible howling they make when BadStrangerCat comes into the yard, the "pay attention to me" squeak and the subtle little scuffle when they're trying to get into something forbidden.

Today I heard that subtle little scuffle. And I heard prey sounds. Oh, do I know prey sounds. I've learned those sounds the hard way. So I ran down to the basement and liberated the robin.

Fortunately Kitsu seems to have a very soft mouth. There was no blood on my hand and it few away brightly and with beauty.
It must be that fledgling time of year again.

Here Birdie, Birdie, Birdie...

The cats were recreating this evening. Fortunately the birds stayed clear of the fun.























There's a hummingbird on the right-hand flower on the feeder, really, look closely.

Instinct

Cats are hunters. You can't change it, it's their nature.

Sachi had never really been outside except for in her carrier on her way to or from the vet. I decided she would be a indoor cat when I realized shortly after she came home that she was deaf. She also had a cold and infected eyes. The medication for those problems cleared up her hearing as well. I'm not sure how well she hears now, but, thinking an indoor cat was a safe, long lived cat, I figured she could stay indoors forever.

Don't think it's going to last. She made a break for it last week. Bolted out the door as I was coming in and scampered away when I called her. Fortunately, it had snowed about 6 inches the day before. She looked at the weird white stuff. She sniffed it. She touched it with her paw. Then she tried to walk on it and sank in up to her armpit.

Eeek! Scary! Gross! Wet! Cold! In house good!

I held the door open and she ran right in.

Since then I've taken her out and stuffed her in through the cat door a couple of times so that, in case she does get out, she'll know how to let herself back in. She can't get out through the cat door because she's not wearing a magnetic key like Kitsu (tricky, eh?), but in is available to anyone/anything small enough to fit through the hole and willing to push.

One of her hobbies is a true cat hobby. She sits on the window sill, skulking behind one of the uprights, watching the birds at the suet feeder. Her intensity is frightening. She quivers, she lashes her mighty kitty tail. When she can't hold it in any longer, she utters strange staccato noises and tries to teleport through the glass.

How does she know what birds are? How does she know that she has to catch them and rend them feather from feather?

Instinct. It's amazing. Frightening too.

Where Have All the Colors Gone?

It snowed this morning again. Not a lot, only a couple of inches, but as I looked out my window at the white snow, white sky and black branches, I wondered. Why is winter black and white and the rest of the year technicolor? Oh, I know there are "gray days", mostly in the early spring and late fall, but winter black and white is so much starker.

There is a blue spruce in the back yard. In the summer it is a lovely glowing gray-blue. In the winter, it's just gray. The ivy, which is emerald most of the year looks black in the winter. Is it simply the contrast with the white, white snow. or do the colors actually flee the cold?
But then comes a Downy Woodpecker

or a Northern Flicker to the suet feeder, quick bright flashes of red, or the subtle rose of a House Finch's breast at the seed feeder and the world is technicolor again.
The bird pictures are not mine, they are links from Utah Birds.