Cat Blogging: I Hear Their Screams At Night

[elfs]

When Dinah was young, she loved to hunt, and Omaha and I routinely chose neighborhoods where she'd have that opportunity. It's not hard to find even modestly priced neighborhoods with large swaths of at least green if not forested land around here. Delridge is a run-down neighborhood, and the hilly land makes development painful, so it's still got its share of hillsides covered in bush and tree.

Dinah brought home large bugs, snakes, and mice from time to time. Omaha once found a garden snake that had somehow escaped into the (then unused) fireplace. Dinah was on one side of the spark grill, and the snake on the other, and they were eyeing each other warily. The snake had a nasty gash along its side.

Dead mice she would leave on the doorstep. Live mice she would bring inside, play with for a while, and then ignore, leaving it up to Omaha and I to chase the poor critters out.

The worst was the mole. Remember that casement window I wrote about? Dinah caught a mole right outside that window and began to torture the poor beast with all the ferocity an adult cat can muster. The screams were horrendous. High pitched squealing that went on and on, a voice that truly screamed "Halp! She's murdering me!" I still hear that poor mole sometimes, in my nightmares.

Comments

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

These are wonderful stories.

{Hugs}

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

I never will forget the last thing my advisor taught me... along with vernard. gus Baird (lower case g, he said, because Augustus was his proper name, and "gus" wasn't "proper", so...) had survived quadruple bypass surgery, and went out for a run one warm and muggy July Atlanta morning.... and didn't *quite* make it home.

They waited to do the public memorial until the kids got back (I was a staffer at that point). One of the grad students got up and rambled on from notes for about ten or fifteen minutes, to opera claps at the end. Then vernard, who'd been very close to gus (and taught me everything I know about CS what gus hadn't), got up and spoke off the cuff (I don't believe he could see to read) for about three minutes. Wasn't a dry eye in the house.

Then - and this is what reminded me - we all went out back where they had refreshments set up, and told gus stories to one another.

Good stories, my friend.