gifts of the Meow-guys...

Miz Minka has bumped my memory, causing me to remember just some of the numerous gifts, lovingly bestowed upon me by various members of the feline purrsuasion... ages ago, before the crust of the earth cooled, I spent 5 fruitful years living in Chicagoland , while I attended grad school, etc.... my feline companions included 3 "lifers", who came with me from Mudville and then returned to CA with me when the -40 winters grew tiresome... Tiger, the elder statescat, had medium longish fur of the most intense red and snowy white...his trademark pluming tail,often carried in a question mark, demonstrated his "nice guy" cattitude to the world, even though  his habit of catching one side of his lip on his gum, displaying one remarkably, menacing fang, seemed to indicate a dark side he never possessed... he was, of course, known about the house as "Fang"... Max was a silver, black and creamy white,"mackerel" [spotted] tabby..he was a snuggler, very brave and bore no creature ill will... Barney, [Max's half brother {different litters,same mom...} was a "Movie Star Cat"... he was big, a long haired black & grey tabby, with the tabby poured over a snowy white chin/throat and legs/underbody...he had huge, bright green eyes and reminded one of a gorgeous, but not-too-bright hunk ... since he LOVED being the center of attention and often did goofy things, he was named after the "Barney Fife" character on the Andy Griffith show  [Max was a lot like the "Andy" character, but I didn't think of that until later...] All three had 4 white feet and I used to remind them that "good guys had white paws..." Besides the gift of their warm, purring catly selves for all the years we had together ... they firmly believed that a well-chosen "gift", from time to time, was needed to cement our relationship ... my apartment was a "garden apt" [the window sills were at ground level...] not orginally intended as a "habitable space"[let's face it, it was the basement and had the hot water pipes for the upper 2 flats,  visible,  under the ceiling to prove it...] during the housing shortages of WW II, it was made into a 2 bdrm flat...the upper two flats in the brownstone had one more[ larger] bedroom and a bigger kitchen over what, on my level, was kept as the communal basement ... set-up in "shotgun" style, it had a large bay-shaped, front[living] room, filled with windows,[eastern exposure,very bright] ...on the outside of the windows, was a boxwood hedge, since the bottom of the windows was ground level...one of the center windows had a torn screen, making it the perfect point for cat disembarcation/re-entry.... the kitties would lurk under the hedge, watching... they didn't go out at night, so the "vantage" point was perfect for spying, sniffing, scritching and hunting... one sunny morning in late spring,[May or June], I was doing chores in the back end of the apt., after freeing the captives to prowl their kingdom...an hour or so later, as I strolled into the front room, I was stopped in my tracks...on the sunny floor in front of me were dozens of grasshoppers, leaping,  jumping, flying short distances... none too big, an inch or so, but a plague just the same...as I stared, open-mouthed and speechless, in the window bounced Max...eyes gleaming, ears twitching, with a grasshopper in his mouth... he jumped down on the floor, and let his prey go...of course, it jumped away and he chased it, scattering the other grasshoppers, who also jumped in every direction....with his tail straight up in the air, ears back, eyes blazing, fangs barred, trilling little chirps, he pursued his prey with little pounces and manic scurries... as the little critters eluded his best efforts, [wood floors didn't offer much traction for his pursuit...], he did a frenetic circle on the furniture and leapt out the window..... stunned, I burst out laughing... until he appeared in the window again with another grasshopper in his mouth , hopped down and the dance began again... quickly, I calculated how many trips he must have already made, [there were dozens of grasshoppers in the room...], and, not knowing just how many young grasshoppers were "left" outside, I was unwilling to "let nature take it's course"... as Max, prey-less once more, flew out in search of more grasshoppers, I moved to the window, entering the "killing fields. I felt the crunch under my feet, felt the bodies hit and bounce off my jeans, heard the whir of wings as one buzzed my head ... just as I got to the window and closed it, there he was again, a new grasshopper securely in his mouth... as he realized the window was closed [it never was when they were out...] he meowed his dismay, dropping his prey as he did... so I opened the window and in he bounced, past his confusion at the closed window and now pleased with himself as only a cat who has just demonstrated his status as "mighty hunter" can be.... it took over an hour to dispatch and remove as many of the grasshoppers as I could find/catch, and afforded Max, as well as Fang and Barney with "tons o' fun" for the next few days as the stragglers showed themselves , after that, I found grasshopper corpses whenever I cleaned...and when I moved out, 3 years later, I turned over the couch and found 3 dead grasshoppers, hanging on to the underside....
Sometime after the "morning of grasshoppers", Max gave me an unexpected gift...I was watching TV in the front room one evening, when Max came running in from the back of the apt...he was looking over his shoulder and growling.... as I watched him, he went back and forth, always looking back and growling... as I walked quietly back towards my bedroom, I heard a clanking sound... my bedroom window looked out on an alley, it was covered with a heavy burgler screen and since I had been robbed several times[7 total], I had wrapped the cord of my clock radio around one of the many water pipes exposed in my area as a security measure, as well as nailing the window so it only opened about 8 "... what I was hearing was someone on the outside, pulling on the clock radio, which they had pulled through the open window and pried-up screen, but the cord was wrapped around the pipe and the plug was clanking against the pipes...there were window blinds and curtains, which were closed, so I couldn't see them and they couldn't see me..without thinking, I dashed in, grabbed the cord and yelled [I can yell rather loud...]...the thief jerked the radio so hard that the plug and cord came out [I'ld like to think that I scared them big time...]...they ran off down the alley with the radio while I was left with the cord... I sat on the bed, shaking, as it sunk-in that I had just been stupid... Max, meowing, jumped up on the bed, to see how I was, followed shortly by Fang and Barney...after much hugging and "good cat-ing", I went to the kitchen, found a can of  Starkist tuna and celebrated my brave watchcat[s].... I have been the receipient of many a catly treasure... many a mouse, bug, rat and birdie have been laid on the catly love alter, but they really pale in comparison to Max's gift...
On a more mundane level, I have learned that much ado and cat praising can be quite useful in distracting the proud hunter while the prey/gift is secreted away, to be properly disposed of at a more propicious moment [without distraction, growling and jaw clamping are quickly followed by hiding under something immovable...then you get to listen to petty bickering, as the pride moves in, followed by crunching sounds, slurping and retching, resulting in other kinds of gifts, yuck !]... besides praise and petting, food is a very effective means to this end...all the petting in the world will not wrench from the keen nostrils of the mighty hunter, the tantalizing aroma of newly dispatched mouse like a simple, aromatic dish of tuna,[mouse ?,{mmmm,slurp,}, what mouse ?,{ gobble, burp}...while disposal of proper [ie already dead], offerings can be distastful...the un-dead are much more problematical... a large, half-grown, mortally injured bird, [thank you, Fang], cannot be deposited in the garbage can with out further violence on the humans' part to insure thr birds demise in as humane and quick a manner as possible...this is distasteful, disgusting and just plain hard...but it is necessary... so is taking a wounded mouse from a gleeful predator whose mother taught them to "play with their food" and flushing said mouse, to prevent further torture [note : flushing should not be attempted on anything larger than a small rodent, don't ask me how I know this, just learn the lesson...]...as morbid as this is, it is still preferable to dealing with the quite lively mouse, "freed" as part of the whole "catch, release, catch, release, ad nauseum" game, who escapes, only to be seen and heard for months as a scuttling, shadowy figure , until its' inevitable capture and execution, [prey who escape the mighty cat, only to flit about in defiance of the feline prowess, flaunting rodent superiority over feline skills, will come to an abrupt, unfortunate and messy end...] Most of my kitties are getting to be senior cat-izens, who don't go outside to joust with rodentia anymore[due to increased traffic hazards], so it's been a long time since I received one of their love offerings... the last time was 2 years ago when the new roof installation rousted a family of immature roof rats...over the period of a few days, I received one young rat per day [total 3], properly dispatched[thank you !] and lovingly placed on my bed by Sumo, the late, great hunter...each time, I would find the fresh kill sometime during the day... when he heard me find it, Sumo would bound in from the back yard, meowing, "look what I did !" and then crawl up into my arms, rub his head on my chin, make beds, drool and purr.... after a few minutes of this lovefest, he would give me a kitty kiss on the chin [yes, with the same mouth that he had used to dispatch the rat...you had to be there...] and bound out to return to his slumbers... then I was left to dispose of the carcass, at my leisure, in the garbage can.... Sumo left us last summer, after the terrible heat storm...I've had only the occasional spider since[and no good kitty kisses...]....Of course, I know that the truest gifts are the soft, warm fur, purring, kitty-kisses,lap-sleeping, bed-making, heat-seeking and comforting presences that have populated my life and have given so freely of all their treasures....during happy, carefree days, outside in the garden or around a cozy fire, in the hectic hurry-up, no time of long working days and in the dark days when loss, pain and grief have been too present .... God gives us many things during our lives ...some pleasant, some not so pleasant...but we must take the good with the bad, we have no choice in that part of it, it's a package deal, like cats and cat boxes.... we can only chose who we share it with and how we approach it...cat gifts are like that too... some are good and some are nasty...it's how we choose to accept and deal with them that makes the difference ....