Natural Born Killers

I am not speaking about the movie. I am speaking about my daughter's new pet. I have always been a dog person. I vaguely recall at one time thinking that I will never ever get a cat. But since we live in a unit, after the mice died of cancer, and the fish are not so good to play with, we decided on a cat.

And now I am a changed man. Caterina is six months old, black with white legs, and the predator instinct fascinates me.

After two days of sleeping under our bed, she now sleeps on the bed. And in the morning we get woken up with a miao to indicate she is hungry. After breakfast it is another miao, this time to indicate that she wants you to play with her. And if you ignore her, she can get quite grumpy.

My playing of course is actually something to keep her fit and powerful for catching her first bird one day. I throw her ball up the stairs. Yes, you read correctly, UP the stairs. She is up the stairs in a flash, but sadly she never brings the ball back to me. I have to go and collect it myself.

Or perhaps she is just very clever, and wants me to get some extra exercise...

Why the title then? Because everything she does is primal, all the playing, pouncing, biting and scratching is built in.

I read a few weeks ago them domesticated cats, when ferrel, can comfortably survive in the wild. I believe that. As long as they had enough time with their mothers as babies to learn the ropes, they will be hunters/predators for life.

And me? Well, my reaction times are getting faster as well. I still sometimes lose the reaction game, and do not pull the toy (or my hand) away fast enough. But other times I do.