They say you can take an outdoor cat inside, but you can't take the outdoors out of the insides of an outdoor cat... Er... something like that. This is true of Cleopatra anyway.

My two girls share their territory with a dutiful can opener, three tortoises (known as "smelly rocks"), and two *birds*, named Jacques and Sandrine. The birds live in a large gilded cage suspended from the ceiling in my study, and they are a joy to listen to as they tweet tweet away. They greet me with birdsong when I arrive home from work each day.

Cleo and Velvet are verrrry interested in their welfare. Very interested.

Cleo used to leave all manners of bird parts on the doorstep of my home (I swear she would artistically arrange them for maximum grossness) before we went Condo. It doesn't matter that she's indoors now, Cleo is still on the hunt. Has been for the last 3 and a half years, as a matter of fact. She has tried jumping, lying cutesy on the floor on her back "Please come out and play little birdies... please?", even trying to solicit my co-operation in getting to that tasty meal in the sky. All avenues have produced no results, but never say die.

In fact, we almost had a death in the family last night. I replenished the birds' seeds, and gave them some fresh water, leaving the cage door open while I got them a fruit treat. Cleo and Velvet were under the cage with heads cocked up at an awkward angle. Cleo was chattering, and her fangs were gleaming.

When I came back into the room I was somewhat surprised to see Jacques on the outside of the cage apparently going to stretch his wings. I guess I spooked him and off he went for a flit around the small room. At this point Cleo is in Warp Factor 9 Bonsai Attack Mode and Jacques, somewhat disorientated, made the unfortunate decision to land on the desk.

Not a good plan.

Cleo moved with tremendous speed as I hollered at her "CLEO!!! NOOOOO!!!"...

The next sequence of events seemed to move in slow motion as Cleo pounced on Jacques, and I pounced on Cleo. It was then the Tweety-Bird-Sylvester-Granny scenario!

"CLEO YOU LET GO THIS INSTANT!!!... SPIT IT OUT!... SPIT IT OUT!!!!"

Feathers flew, a bird squawked, and then flew up to the cage. Cleo said something to me I cannot repeat in this family oriented format. It may have been in cat, but the meaning was fairly clear. She affixed me with the "stare of death" and a mouth full of feathers, then stalked off. Velvet meanwhile was practicing her chattering and jumping up and down, clearly enjoying the spectacle. A ruffled but otherwise intact Jacques shrieked birdie insults from his safe haven. I bet it'll be awhile before he does THAT again.

Last night Cleo didn't sleep beside me as she always has these past seven years. This morning, though, good news! she arrived on the bed to greet me, presumably to give me my daily wake-up nose wash. Today, however I got a backside instead.

Will she ever forgive and forget? Stay tuned.

Copyright © Bill Mason
June 13, 2001