Spoonerisms: To Catch the Bird, Become the Bird

Every spring, hordes of pigeons descend on Southern California for breeding season. This must be a bonanza for free-range cats, but for some house-bound cats, it's the stuff of daydreams. Dipity spends these months peering through the blinds. This last month, not having managed to capture a bird through the closed windows, she tried a new tactic: to catch the bird, first become the bird.

First, one day I was sitting on the couch while she was watching cooing pigeons from the nearest window. All of a sudden she zipped into the closed, and, trust me, not so clean that it was all that transparent, window. The window, of course, stood its ground, she bounced off, knocking a bunch of stuff on the storage unit under the window off, but less than 5 seconds later, she was peeking out the window at the birds again, although she didn't try to go through the glass. It occurred me to that birds are well known for flying into closed windows. Perhaps Dippy was trying to emulate them either to understand them better, or to convince them that she was one of them.

A week or so later, I got woken up at 6AM because Dippy was at the bedroom window, energetically jostling the blinds and making those weird warbling sounds cats often do when they're stalking prey. To me, it sounded like she was trying to mimic the birds to talk them into coming on over. "Hey, I'm a bird just like you. Come play in my mouth."

The pigeons were not convinced. And while it is pretty amusing behavior, I don't really like being amused at 6AM on a work day.

The pigeons have mostly departed now, so Dippy is back to running around, stalking things generally only she can see. But at least her imaginary prey friends seem to stay on the same side of the window glass.