27 April 2009

A diversity of creatures

Aoife is an indoor cat. This is in part because her mean, cruel, heartless monkey can read mortality stats concerning outdoor cats, for both the cats and diverse songbirds, and it's in part because she is a territorial creature, and when in the grip of such notions apparently believes she could pound the stuffing out of a brace of Kodiak bears. Since I disagree with this assessment, and since I expect a number of the local outside cats would, too, not to mention cars and coyotes, she stays in.

She does get out on the balcony; even under severe provocation, she seems unwilling to leap the nine or so feet to the ground, which is why she continues to be allowed out there. This results in a certain amount of hopeful lurking inside the open door, just in case some songbird is very, very stupid. Being inside the door when something interesting happens therefore results in a sequence like this:
I am a descendant of Egyptian gods, and your external doings are beneath my notice. (Pay no attention to the deployed tail.)
Something of interest may be occurring outside of my oversight!
I will let it think I am ignoring it.

The mean, cruel, heartless monkey continues to tell himself that the tail fluffing, foot stomping, and darting about for angles of view (with her noggin stuffed out betwixt the rails of the railing as far as ever it might go) is healthful exercise and much better for her than attempts to exercise actual territorial imperative.

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