Clyde: The Great Hunter

Clyde is a great cat. He will usually let the boys maul him without complaining--at least for a while. Bonnie normally runs when they come with 20 feet of her. Of course she is not built like a dog, Clyde is.

For the first couple years we had them they were not allowed outside. That was part of deal when we adopted them--that they be inside cats. When we moved out to Oregon that was the case for about a year also. Then for some reason or another we started letting them go outside. Come to think of it we probably started doing that when Bonnie started having issues with one particular couch--she was confusing it with a litter box. She still occasionally does that with one particular rug when she gets scared . . . but this story is about Clyde.

It seems like it took awhile but Clyde's inner hunter gradually came out. First there were things like bugs and worms and baby birds that would end up on the doorstep. Then the birds started to show up on the doorstep full grown. Not large birds, sparrow size mostly. Then came the mice soon after.

Clyde in case you can't tell is a rather large cat. He seems pretty lazy and so we had kind of assumed that Bonnie, who seems a bit feral, was the hunter. Then I saw Clyde hunt a dragonfly this summer. He was sitting watching it fly back and forth and then without running, he leaped about 4 feet in the air while performing a flip, grabbing the dragonfly with his claws. It was spectacular. It was akin to Charles Barkley, the rolly-polly former NBA player doing a gymnastic floor routine--meaning that it seemed unlikely to occur. Anyway, it was then that I was figured that Clyde was at least partially to blame for the deaths at our doorstep. One night soon after I came home from studying late at the law library and found Bonnie and Clyde playing with a mouse in the driveway. They had maimed it, but it was still alive. That were taking turns pouncing on it and batting it around. The poor mouse.

Last night was another hunting night. I was a rather rainy miserable night and I guess that was perfect for hunting. At about 11:30 PM he was pawing at the sliding glass door in the back with a mouse--still twitching--in his mouth.



As I came to let him in he dropped it near the door and came in meowing to brag about what he had done. I told him he was a great cat, petted him and gave him some fresh food. He was then quiet and settled on to our bed content.

Well done might hunter, well done.