The Great Calico Hunter Redux

Puddin’ is at it again.  Can you picture her wearing a cat-sized pith helmet? Not only is she continuing the lizard hunt in the dining room, she’s also going wild in the living room.  We were spending a quiet evening in front of the TV, when she began leaping in the air and running around the furniture.  Knowing there were no lizards to be found, I thought she was chasing a stink bug. We occasionally see them in the living room, but her best stink bug hunting ground is in my office, where she stalks them constantly. 

This evening, though, she was on the prowl in the living room.  She darted behind the entertainment center and seemed to be stuck.  I pried her out from behind it and discovered she was chasing a stuffed fuzzy grey mouse that she’d inherited from her predecessor.  Dancer, our last cat, had stopped playing with toy mice or anything else, for that matter, long before she went to kitty heaven at age 22.

I tossed the mouse out into the room and in the midst of that chase, Puddin’ unearthed a small stuffed brown mouse.  Next was a green sparkly toy. All of these items have been lying untouched in the toy basket near the easy chair for at least six months. If you’ve ever had cats, you know that they can make these tiny toys come alive by tossing them in the air and pouncing on them non-stop. We were howling just watching her chase her toys around the coffee table.

All those antics inspired my husband to get out the “bird” as he calls it.  That’s a wand with a string and feather attached to it.  Puddin’ will leap two feet in the air and do flips trying to catch it.  By the time she ran out of steam and called it quits, she was panting and her little ears were hot. She hasn’t gotten that worn out since she was a kitten. Not long after that, she headed upstairs to sack out on the dog’s bed, and that’s where she stayed until the next morning.

And you ask, “What was the 80 pound dog doing during all this activity?”  He was quietly lying on his bed in the living room, completely undisturbed and no doubt thinking the cat was crazy. Not much excites the boy. Well, he gets excited when he sees his leash or sees me put on my ball cap, thinking that a walk is in the offing, but get excited about the cat?  No way.

There have been no further mouse or bird hunts since that evening, but Puddin’ continues to don her pith helmet every morning and stake out the dining room in search of the lizard.