One for the birds

Small Cat has a love-hate relationship with birds. She will stop whatever she is doing – be it chasing a bug, ambushing Father, chirping at me about her plans for the day or sleeping sacked out on her back on the once-cream sofa cushions – to stare piercingly at the offending fowl when it lands on the awning-roof outside any of our windows, and then chatter her teeth and make keening, protesting noises. If she is perched out on the air-conditioner, protected from any kind of danger by a neat metal grill that creates a small balcony, she will stand up on her hind legs and try and grab the bird – to no avail, of course. And if you give her a feather, she will chase it and bite it and mangle it, as if it is the bird that she really wants to get her paws on and claws into, leaving most of it intact albeit barely recognisable, the rest tucked nicely into her fat little tummy.

Cats and birds go together like French fries and burgers, pizza and college dorms, Tom and Jerry, the Roadrunner and Wylie Coyote. Some years ago I had a very handsome black and white tom, who had his big green eyes fixed firmly on a family of hoopoes that lived in a tree that drooped over my garden. I never thought he would do anything about it. But slowly, day after day, he managed to slither his way up that tall trunk, grab first the babies and then the parents and devour all of them. At least, I think that’s what he did, judging from his rather smug and satisfied expression at the end of the adventure. I never saw him do the dirty deed – or deed, since the family had four members – but my parents did, and told me that he scuttled off into the park behind the house with the birds hanging limply from his mouth and then came back licking his chops and shuddering with gentle burps.

One night - or early morning, as it actually happened to be – the cat was out on his usual routine of fighting, playing and prowling. He came back, as was the habit, a while later, the bell on his collar jingling, his squeaks gradually escalating into a demanding yowl. This time, though I had woken up when the jingle filtered into my fast-asleep brain cell, his vocalisation sounded different. When I blearily opened the door, he bounded in, charging into the bedroom and on to my bigger-than-double bed, with what seemed suspiciously to be a furtive gleam in his eyes. I followed hastily, some instinct telling me that he was up to something that was no good at all. And I was right. He sat there, figuratively tying a napkin around his neck and polishing up a knife and fork, as he got set to tear into what looked to me to be a very dead pigeon. It was. The rest of the story can be known without its telling, but what I remember best is the only words I could come up with at the time: “Do you realise that it is 4 am!?”

I do not like urban birds very much, not those that I see most regularly around the apartment block where we live, at least. Mostly mynahs, parrots, pigeons and crows, I sometimes spot the occasional kingfisher, its brilliant plumage in shades of glittering blue shining jewel-toned and gorgeous in the tiny moment it flutters around the plants outside the windows. Upstairs, in the stairwell leading to the terrace, lives an owl, Father tells me, not too large, but happily settled in its snug and rain-sheltered nook. And the kite that sits on a ledge on the bank building next door preens and screeches some weekends, dropping by from wherever it normally soars for a short but spectacular visit.

For me, birds are natural, lovely, elegant creatures, in their natural habitat and familiar element. All I ask is that they stay there.