A Predule To Hunting Season

Ladies, gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages; the weather outside is growing increasingly warm, the birds increasingly jubilant and the bloodlust that's lain dormant within the breast of the hunter throughout the winter increasingly hungry.

It seems as if hunting season began yesterday, with not so much a bang as a bloodcurdling series of rodent squeals, barely even uttered before they were choked off by intense arterial spray and a mound of corpses so dense as to cut off any warning that Cat is once again out for blood.

And out for blood she truly is. I won't go into the details before I'm able to present you all with a comprohensive photographic record, but I will offer the image at right as evidence of the smallest kill of the nascent hunting season.

She killed the little guy, saw a larger mouse, went after it, and left the original corpse there for me to clean up.

I've become a Cleaner.

For the rest of the gory details, stay tuned. Same Cat Time, Same Cat Channel.

A Dearth Of Murder

It would seem, ladies and gentlemen, that not only is there a "hunting season," but that said season seems to have come to an end months ago.

Blame the chill hand of Ded Moroz. Blame the pervasive spirit of Christmas. Hell, blame whatever kept a ship full of Yautja warriors from killing Danny Glover at the end of Predator 2, if you must. In any case, the result is the same: months without a dead rodent, and a palpable sense of bloodlust welling within whatever part of Cat's brain is descended directly from the monstrous thunder lizards of yore.

Personally, I blame climate change. Like so many Ed Begley Jr.'s I see the shift to near-freezing nights as reason enough for Cat to stay inside, languidly stretched in front of a fire, instead of tearing throats and crushing spines. Can any of you say you'd rather be outside enjoying the tang of fresh arterial spray betwixt your jaws when the mercury drops to unholy depths?

I thought not. Still, as March comes to a close and the sun grows ever bolder, I have a dark feeling that hunting season is once again near at hand.

For the sake of Internet bloodlust, let's hope Cat feels the same.

All Quiet On The Western Front

As the weather turns cold, the leaves turn red and the sun ducks out of the office earlier and earlier each day, it seems that Cat has opted to spend more and more of her day lounging peacefully indoors. Whether atop a goose down duvet or wrapped snugly in her next of fleece blankets, she spends only a handful of hours awake, and even fewer of those roaming the night looking for prey.

As such, I bring you no tale of death and destruction, but instead a peaceful image of Cat relaxing blissfully, likely dreaming horrific things about decapitated rodents and eviscerated birds.

Consider this a Christmas present from that most sinister of killers: The house cat.

Devour The Heart To Gain Their Strength, The Brain To Gain Their Intelligence

There is an ancient superstition amongst war-like cultures that by devouring the heart of a recently slain foe a warrior could gain their strength. Whether this was true or the resulting increase in strength was the conclusion drawn by soldiers whose next opponents were scared out of their minds on finding themselves staring down a sword-wielding cannibal with a face and chest smeared in the blood of what used to be their best friend has never been conclusively determined either way.

Regardless of the superstition's validity, it seems to be alive and well in feline culture. The events of the last twelve hours are proof of that.

As with all great stories, this one starts at the beginning. Specifically, 9:13PM when I hear mewling. If you've been following along with Cat's exploits, you can likely guess what that means. Recognizing the familiar sound, but thinking it was FAR too early for it to be a dead mouse -- "Cat hunts at night, not during Gossip Girl," I thought -- I opened my door to see Cat delightedly crushing another mouse's skull betwixt jaws smeared with entrails, blood and formerly twitch-happy whiskers.

I sighed, took pictures for you all, then began the grisly task of taking Cat's trophy, and disposing of it via the suction of the toilet bowl. It's like St. Peter for the rodent set. Every time a toilet flushes, an angel gets its wings, or some such shit.

Pun.

While sending the mouse -- let's call him Mickey for giggles -- to the Great Urinal In The Sky, I noticed something odd about this kill. I don't mean "odd" like "we're going to need to call Lennie Briscoe in on this one"-type odd, no, I mean "Cat only ate one part of Mickey, his brain" odd. I didn't realize that Cat found Cerveau De Souris to be a delicacy, but it would explain why I'm always finding her crunching away on skulls, and so rarely tearing off pieces of shoulder or flank.

Or perhaps there's another reason. Let's jump ahead about 7 hours.

Circa 3:00 AM this morning, I hear mewling. Not "Father, I've brought you a dead animal as a present, please come see it while I eat parts of it to show you how awesome I am both as a hunter, and your best friend" mewling. No, this was a type of mewling I'd never heard before.

Cautiously, stepping out into my hallway and flipping on a light, I noticed something else that was odd: The hall was empty. Usually when Cat calls to me she's standing right outside my door. As if to wash away any confusion splattered across my face, it was at this moment that Cat mewled again, pointing out to me that she was actually in my bathroom. I opened the door, flipped on the light and realized immediately what she's wanted me to see.

Cat has learned (most likely aided by all that brain she ate earlier in the day) how to drink from the toilet!

This may not seem that impressive compared to the construction of the Hubble Space Telescope, but I'm still quite amazed that Cat found her own unending source of water. Taken alongside her propensity for killing and devouring small animals seemingly at will, and this is further proof that Cat no longer needs me.

I expect to wake up quite dead tomorrow morning. Good night friends.

In Brightest Day ...

Like a heroin addict needing increasingly massive hits to experience that same initial burst of euphoric dopamine, or a serial killer who progresses from pulling the wings off of flies to dismembering children in his basement, Cat's homicidal activities seem to have expanded.

No longer content to wait for the calm stillness and concealing solitude of night, Cat has taken to ending lives in the light of mid-day. It's a bold step, a brazen flaunting of his disregard for the lives of those small, furry things too stupid to avoid his slashing claws and rending teeth, but in retrospect it seems inevitable.

There were simply never enough hours in the night to satiate Cat's bloodlust.

Cat Killed The Radio Star

Benjamin Franklin once said that there were only two certainties in life: taxes and the death of small animals at the paws of Cat. While Mr. Franklin's prediction probably sounded a trifle strange to those within earshot (who changed the phrase to simply read "death" when Ben wasn't paying attention), he was certainly not incorrect, as every entry in this blog will prove.

Of course, had Franklin lived today, he may have also added "the inexorable forward march of technology" to his list of unavoidable realities. Where we once had horse-drawn buggies we now have automobiles. Where we once had swords we now have assault rifles. Where we once had velociraptors we now have Cat.

And like the velociraptors who were replaced with a predator more lethal, more cunning, and a hundred times more fuzzy, wuzzy, wuzzy, so too have Cat's exploits been replaced with something more appealing to modern man.

So pour yourself a drink dear reader. Sit back in a comfortable chair and relax yourself. Today, instead of a series of pictures, I present the first live-action video footage of Cat's exploits.

I shouldn't have to warn you by now, but please, if there are any children or people of weak constitution in the audience, we urge you, for the sake of any delicate fabrics or valuable electronics nearby, do not press play on the video window below.

You'll just end up covered in vomit and sadness.

Death Is But A Game

Proving that he has no regard for the sanctity of life, Cat decided to promote his latest kill with a bit of cruel gamesmanship. After drawing my attention to the poor victim, Cat proceeded to bat the nearly dead corpse up and down a flight of stairs, pausing only to ensure that I was still paying attention.

Even after the body had stopped moving, Cat continued to defile it, tossing the unmoving form into the air, catching it, then batting it against the wall two, three, four times. Each time the tiny rodent's remains would bounce off the unmoving carpeted surface with a sickening thud, offering Cat enough lively interaction to entertain his bloodthirsty mind.

"I don't care that this thing is dead! If I hit it hard enough it will move and that's reason enough to hit it again!" he seemed to say with each vicious swipe of his lethal claws.