A Bird In The Shirt Is Worth Chasing A Cat Through The Briars

My name is Leighanna and I am an animal freak. I behave in strangely dangerous ways regarding my numerous pets though and that’s just their tough luck. For instance, one day I decided to let the birds relax on the porch with about sixteen hungry cats skulking around like vultures hovering above a dead antelope carcass. I hung out with them all for a few hours and listened to their conversations. Cat’s aren’t really worth listening to because they can be overly self-centered so I’ll pretty much just stick to the bird dialogue here. The birds consist of two dim-witted but very beautiful tan ring-necked doves. You can imagine the feline puns about the ring-necks and neck-wringing so I won’t belabor those. Anyway the birds are named Peachly and Mumble. The name “Mumble” comes from the movie Happy Feet of which I am an enthusiastic fan entirely based on my lust for Elijah Woods with his piercing blue eyes and pointy ears. The name Peachly has absolutely no basis whatsoever and what of it, hunh?

The birds had only dropped a few feathers during the time I spent on the porch alternately tossing cats on top of the bird cage and hissing at the top of my lungs so I felt pretty good about leaving the birds there on the porch utterly alone and helpless, surrounded by their nearly countless and mortal enemies to… take… a… bath. Yes, I decided I needed a long luxurious bath while the birds shrank in mortified terror with a minimum of two cats clinging by claws and teeth to the sides of their eighteen inch by eighteen inch cage. I swear I don’t know how the cats figured out how to open the top of the cage but no sooner had I settled into the nice warm water when there comes this very disappointing “thump” from the porch. “Hmmmm…” I said to myself “that didn’t sound like a cage being knocked over thump... it was more of a leaping sort of thump. I wonder what happened?“

I toweled up and proceeded to brew some coffee before wandering out to the porch to clean up the mess when to my utter surprise, the birds were in the tree next to the house cuddling and cooing as if they owned the joint. The cats were scattered about like leaves, rather beside themselves with twitching, licking their chops, flicking their tails and generally wishing they could fly and boy wouldn’t that be something!

“What the hell are you doing up there?” I asked the birds, aiming the question more at Peachly than Mumble because Mumble has the mental acuity of a dead flashlight battery. You will not believe this but they freaking ignored me. Yeah! For the next 45 minutes I watched as they flitted around within the branches of huge oak tree, hopping and flapping from twig to twig in tandem just to tease me and the sixty-five cats now assembled, word of inadvertently-released-tame-and-thus-totally-helpless-slash-clueless-birds having traveled with lightning speed through the neighborhood via the feline grapevine.

I couldn’t figure out several things that afternoon and among them how the cats had opened the cage (even though I showed them several ways before bath time), how the birds (because they are as dumb as lima beans) had eluded annihilation vis-a-vis the cats but chiefly why only my left ear pops when I ride on airplanes.

I had a chance to change clothes so traded the towel for my traditional mega-death black outerwear. I had returned to the porch with my brother’s BB pistol intending to take in some target practice when suddenly, in a death-defying move, the two birds flitted from the oak tree and alighted on the shingle roof laden with what appeared to be a calico carpet but was in fact a dizzying array of supine felines. So astonished were the cats that they failed to react in time before the birds again took flight and landed in a fern covered tree at the other end of the porch. Alex, our own gray and imperturbable male cat approximately ten months of age and desperately wanting to make a name for himself, leapt into the air and snagged Mumble in a move of which Mickey Mantle would be proud. On the rebound he immediately shot into the woods with Mumble pinched tightly in his mouth and the clear intention of consumption on his sinister little mind. Leaping from the porch I grabbed Peachly and wrapped him in my shirt like a burrito. Sprinting through the briars with one hand rolled around a shirttail full of Peachly. I was able to keep Alex in sight while I yelled curse words my grandmother taught me to control the speed and direction of fleeing cats.

Within twenty-five yards I had him cornered between a fallen pinetree and an old cistern. Alex slowed and turned to face me and as Mumble hung limply from the sides of Alex’s mouth I just knew he had bought the farm. Amazingly Mumble actually blinked at me slowly and conveyed the following message in dovespeak:

“Those long sharp white things in this cat’s mouth, you know, the teeth? Well those things are digging into my back like you wouldn’t believe so CAN YOU FREAKING GET ME OUT OF HERE??!!”

I grabbed Alex’s tail and yanked it like a party-popper whereby Mumble spat free and immediately took wing to the nearest tree branch. Alex fled towards the house with the standard cat stiff vertical tail. Being in a state of absurd shock and having absolutely nothing to lose I shook the entire tree whereupon Mumble tumbled off the branch and fell to the forest floor in a fine feathered flop (how’s that for alliteration?). Quickly rolling another bird burrito, I slowly and thankfully made my way back to the house and was greeted by nearly one hundred rather deflated cats. Alex met me on the porch, rubbed his back against my legs and wrapped his tail around my calf with a “Who me?” look on his face, the little shit.

I am already planning my next bird adventure where I balance their cage on the handlebars of my four-wheeler. Se... la… vie.

This story is based on true events that happened to my sister.