Collections by the cats By Pat Gibson

Our old Siamese, Pooh Chan, did bring in a mouse or two but he was not much on hunting small animals. His joy was to stalk the neighbor's German Shepherd and pick a fight. The bigger the critter, the better he liked the fight. I guess I was not sufficiently impressed with his gifts to me because he didn't bring me very many.

The last straw was when we wouldn't let him keep the jack rabbit. He brought the rabbit through a hole in the screen door while my husband and I were enjoying a quiet moment on the balcony and the crew was asleep downstairs. (He had torn a hole in the screen door chasing the neighbor's dog off the porch and after the second time we decided to let the hole be a cat door.) The biggest problem was the young jackrabbit he had caught wasn't dead yet. From the upstairs, the noise of Pooh chasing that rabbit around the house was downright spooky. This was when the house was still very unfinished, and we had to climb down a ladder to get from the main level to the lower level so it had to be pretty bad before we'd leave the cool breeze on the balcony to investigate, but we finally decided that the weird noises need to be checked. There was blood and rabbit fur all over downstairs. The rabbit was under on of the crew's beds and in great pain. We caught it in a box then my husband took it outside and shot it. Since he used a shotgun, he buried the rabbit rather than let the cat have it back. That cat sulked for days. He never did bring me anything else he killed or was trying to kill.

Now once Frodo, crew number one's cat brought in something that nearly got him made into a cat fur hat. My oldest son was doing his homework when Frodo came scratching at his door. He tried to ignore the cat, but Frodo was insistent. While still sitting at his desk or keeping his nose in a book, he opened the door without looking closely at the cat. One of his sisters did look at the cat just as he dropped a small snake on the floor. The cat began to chase the snake across the room. The snake was trying to find a place to hide and we were trying to keep it out in the open. Crew number two managed to catch the snake in the bathroom where it had gotten into the shower. The snake was a ribbon snake and harmless, but it had no business in the house!. Since that time we are much more careful about what Frodo is carrying when he scratches to get in.

Ribbon snakes are harmless critter and very pretty, but that's another story.

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