Kallisti brought me a present the other day.Usually, his presents are cat toys and the occasional moth. But there are English sparrows nesting in the rhododenron outside my living room window, and he caught a fledgling, just for me.
I was making brownies with Cheetah when I heard the shrieking. It sounded much like the noises the parents had been making at the fledgelings for two weeks, but it was closer. Did one of them get inside? I wondered, and walked into the living room.
And there was Kallisti, holding down a fledgling with his paw. My hunter looked up at me, pride evident in his green-gold eyes. He had a swaggering look about him, a look of hi, mom, I BROUGHT you something to EAT!
And when he was sure i was looking--when I was advancing on him to rescue the bird, thinking that surely he was just playing with it--he reached down and grabbed its neck with his canines.
And with a jerk, broke its neck.
The screams fells silent.
Kallisti made that chuckly little meow-purr that he does when he's pleased with something, picked up the dead bird, and retreated up the stairs. I followed him and got the bird away from him just as he was about to put it on my pillow.
I sometimes forget that unlike the other two cats, this one is a practiced killer. He hunted for food long before the animal control people scooped him up and brought him to the shelter that August.
And with one gesture, he proved to me that he is practiced in the killing of small things. This is a cat who doesn't fuck around on the hunt. Other cats might play with their prey, but not him. He's all business.
I sighed and put the little dead bird in the trash. It was old enough to fly but not, apparently, old enough to beware of the black cat in the garden. Two little trickles of blood came from the neat puncture wounds on either side of its neck. No other marks on it. He handled it entirely gently until the time came to kill it for me.
He is efficient, when he wants to be.
He was merely being a cat, and I don't mind that much. I picked him up and told him what a wonderful cat he was, and how I would never starve as long as I had such a fine cat to bring me food. He purred and bumped me under the chin.
We have to take love where we find it. In whatever form it's in. Even if it's a small dead bird we're going to throw out anyway.
