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It’s no secret that I am obsessed with my cats, Budapest and Luka. Sometimes, though, it can be a little trying dealing with those little murderous effers.
Budapest’s main pastime and dharma in this life is to kill things. I don’t begrudge her this and realize that nature is cruel and that it’s a cat’s God-given instinct to hunt. I am secretly proud of her every time she brings home a tiny warm dead body to show off. Budapest had a mysterious and unquestionably challenging childhood and I find it touching that she has managed to not just thrive but that she has taken to cold-blooded murder so cunningly. It warms my heart that she has found her path.
However, I am also an aspiring Buddhist with my own path and so have an obligation to protect life whenever possible (or at least, convenient). So, when the baby bird she brought home today looked to still have its wits about it, I felt compelled to pry it out of Buda’s jaw.
That was only the beginning. Once freed from the clutches of certain death, the baby bird dropped to the kitchen floor, panicked, and ran under the stove. So then I had a quandary, because I certainly wasn’t prepared to leave the baby bird to die a slow, lonely, terrified death under my stove. I am partial to “freeze” in fight/flight/freeze situations, but after I got that over with and looked around, I realized that no one else was going to deal with the situation, so once again, I was on my own.
I quickly inserted fresh batteries into my headlamp so I could see under the stove (I had a premonition when I finally bought them at Home Depot the other day), found a long stick in the back yard, and went about gingerly compelling little tiny fragile bird out from under the stove with the stick. Mission eventually accomplished, but of course as soon as it hit daylight it panicked again and ran behind my fireplace, with both cats in full pursuit.
Jesus Christ. I won’t bore you with the rest of the sloppy rescue scenario details, but I did eventually manage to get the bird in a box, after a few more cat-jaw-prying incidents. I took a look. It was in shock, breathing rapidly, eyes wide open, but didn’t seem to have a broken neck and no tooth-mark stab wounds. It wasn’t moving, but it appeared lucid. So, now what?
After a series of panicky space-outs and pointless phone calls to local vets, I eventually ended up on the line with the after-hours dude on call at the Humane Society. He offered to swing by and pick it up. So, I took my box full of freaked out baby bird onto the front steps to wait for him (it’s kinda tricky finding my house and I didn’t want to waste a moment). I ended up sitting, and waiting, and sitting… for quite a while. The whole time, I stared intently at the baby bird. Monitored it’s breathing with my eyes. Made sure it was still coherent. Watched its eyeballs track my movement. I felt confident that it was gonna be okay.
Turns out it was more than okay. The moment the Humane Society truck pulled up and I turned my attention off the baby bird for one split second, it suddenly jumped up and out of the box and sprinted off into the bushes. Leaving me with an empty box and a lot of explaining to do.
At first Humane Society Dude eyed me skeptically as if I just made the whole story up for a little attention on a gloomy Monday night in Mill Valley. He informed me that he had a wounded fawn to save up the road. “For God’s sake!” I said, “Go to the fawn! Why did you come here first?”
Just then, we heard an unbirdly loud chirp from the bushes to my right. H.S.D. said, “Does that sound like your bird?” Now, keep in mind that I had known this bird for an extremely traumatic and brief half hour and that I had heard it chirp only once in a blind panic as it raced around my kitchen trying to escape. Also keep in mind that my cottage is surrounded by birds that chirp nonstop at all hours of daylight and at every possible pitch. So, for me to discern if that particular chirp was “my bird’s chirp” was kind of a tall order.
Sure enough though, it was. Because a moment later, we glimpsed said bird screaming through the underbrush. So, H.S.D. decided to believe me that there was, in fact, a bird to begin with. Which was nice. But, unfortunately, it wasn’t nice enough to actually help us find the bird and help it. At this point, of course, I was starting to wonder if my maniacal fixation on “helping” it was actually any help at all.
So, H.S.D. took off to deal with the injured fawn, and I retreated back into my cottage to chastise my cats for being such bloodthirsty sociopaths. They gave me blank stares.
I have no idea what the moral of this story is, except that obviously I should just put the Humane Society on speed dial, at this point.
My cat used to be very good at catching birds too – and playing with them until they were dead. I put a bell on her collar and that pretty much solved the problem as she could no longer sneak up on prey.