My cat Eartha just brought in a bird; a young female cardinal. I hate it when she brings birds inside because there is always a big mess of feathers after she gets done eating them. I managed to get it away from her and take it back outside. It was still alive, though barely, and I stroked it and told it again and again how sorry I was. Not that me being sorry mattered, because I left it outside for her and as soon as she came out I went back inside and closed the door. Well, pretty soon here she comes again (there is a cat entrance to the house through the basement). So I get it away from her again. This time it is pretty much dead, but still warm. I was getting ready to do the same thing I had done last time hoping for a different result when it finally dawned on me. My cat wanted me to watch her eat this bird she so cleverly stalked and murdered. So, I just stood there, and she immediately tore into it. It’s amazing how fast cats can devour entire animals, sometimes leaving no trace. But more often leaving a bunch of blood and guts and feathers, or that tiny little organ I call a gizzard whenever they eat a mouse. So I stood there and watched her eat the whole thing. Slow and methodical. Flesh tearing. Bones crunching. Every now and then she would stop and get all attentive and look around as if something were going to sneak up on her while she engaged in her orgy of carnage. With me standing right there. And then she would warily go back at it. She made pretty short order of it. At the end she chowed down the tail feathers, crunching on the bones as she sucked them in like pieces of spaghetti. Likewise with the legs. There was a lot of crunching. I’ve seen cats eat entire rabbits before. Now THERE’S a lot of crunching. My old cat Doodlewhopper ate a rabbit one time and all I heard was crunching and purring. It reminded me of the accounts about the great killer lion the movie The Ghost in the Darkness was based upon. Witnesses said after the beast would drag men screaming from their tents in the night they could hear the sounds of purring and crunching bones coming from the jungle. Cats are brutal creatures. But before you judge them too harshly just you remember that human beings are way more brutal, and that we have ways of being brutal to each other that make the worst thing any cat ever did look like child’s play. If child’s play were torturing and murdering other creatures. Which, frankly, sometimes it is.
[All cats names have been changed to protect the guilty.]
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