The Bird Catcher

You may have seen on CNN last week that a controversial new law has been proposed in Wisconsin to allow cat hunting. The idea is that any cat wandering outside without a collar on could be legally shot. The argument for doing this is to protect the bird population: experts estimate that almost 8 million birds are killed every year in Wisconsin by stray cats. As you might anticipate, the public meetings held to discuss the proposal were highly emotional.

"My cat is so fl-fluffy," one woman sniffled red eyed into the microphone, "you can't see his collar, and he would be sh-h-hot".

I don't quite know what to make of this. I am personally all in favour of collars, the brighter the better. Before we knew he was definitely male, I went out and bought NewKitty a collar, hot pink with pawprints that glow green in the dark. However, I am not sure that I want vigilante gangs of mid-westerners prowling the streets shooting cats. And as I found out today, keeping collar-less cats indoors is not necessarily any protection for the local bird population...

Birds quite often get into this house. They fly around for a couple of hours, causing general havoc, in any direction except towards the wide open doors. They quite often mistake an armchair or the carpet for a toilet. Chasing them is not much good, because they just fly up out of reach to perch under the skylights. Last time a bird got inside, in desperation I eventually settled on a tactic of leaving a trail of wild birdseed from the bird's current position on the mantelpiece to wide open the french windows. It didn't work. Eventually, it randomly flew in the opposite direction, out the front door, and I was left to clean up the half pound of birdseed on the carpet.

Today another bird flew in, this time through the front door while I had it propped open for a few minutes. This time, it had the misfortune to run into NewKitty, who was in a surprisingly business-like mood, given he had eaten a large breakfast only half an hour earlier. He herded it away from the room with the skylights, and into LandladyLynn's study, where the ceilings are lower. In the flash of a whisker, he had bounded onto her desk, caught the bird and killed it, with only the merest squawk of protest. For a cat with no front claws, this was impressive work.

The only slight problem with all this was that Newkitty failed to clean up his dead bird mess. Given MrBird's murder was perpetrated with his paw, behind the printer, this seemed rather bad manners, and likely not to go down too well with LandladyLynn, who is due to return from California this evening...

***

For those of you who did not read the New York Times style section yesterday, there was a very helpful website featured called www.airlinemeals.net, self described as "the world's first and leading website about nothing but airline food£. You can click on just about any airline to see reviews of their airline meals (with lurid pictures), plus lots of hot gossip on which airline has cut which service lately. Apparently, for example, RyanAir are saving money by eliminating window blinds on their planes. I share the NYT's opinion that cutting darkness is a bit drastic.