Dear Ferret Folks-
Years ago, when I was still new to ferrets, my sister came over to
visit for the weekend. She had no rat-sitter available, so she brought
her carry cage with a rat inside. Well, she didn't even get a chance to
put the cage down in the house. Don't, sister of No came into the room
to see what all the fuss was about. All she did was *look* at the rat
in the cage. Just look at it. The next thing we knew, the fully grown
rat somehow collapsed its skull and thorax and BLEW out of its cage,
right through the tightly packed metal bars, dropped to the floor and
ran to hide. Don't, being a competent ferret ran off in pursuit.
Oh, the wailing and gnashing of teeth! It took...hmm...four adults a
good ten minutes to find the rat after we had scooped up Don't and put
her in her own cage. She was so very, very cheesed off. That was *her*
rat, as far as she was concerned. We finally scooped up the rat and
looked at his cage. He had actually bent the bars by blowing out
through them. That rat lived to a ripe old age, and it was the only
time he escaped his cage.
The rat was not completely*stupid*, although his methodology was
flawed, to say the least. Ferret=Death. Run for it!
And now I come to the Night of the Mice, as we call it in my family.
Maybe twenty years ago my mother had a feline birth control problem.
She had two female cats, and one of them gave birth to seven kittens.
Now my mom had two adults, and seven teenaged cats. Let's call them
nine cats, for all intents and purposes.
That's a lot of cats.
My aunt Dana came to visit, and she likes to sleep on floors. Don't
really know why. Something about her back. She elected to spend the
night on the living room floor. The living room had one full story,
and a second story accesed by a staircase that lead to a balcony. The
second story balcony overlooked the floor level where Dana slept.
At first, everything was fine. Then dawn approached, and the nine cats
woke up and felt perky. My aunt heard some thumping of little feet
going up and down the staircase, but she was semi asleep and was just
trying to shut the sound out. Then, something landed on her face, and
Oh, GAD! It ran into her sleeping bag and squirmed.
She FREAKED. It was dark, she didn't know what it was, and it was IN
THE SLEEPING BAG WITH HER. Well, she extricated herself and turned the
sleeping bag upside-down, and shook. In the faint light coming through
the windows a mouse-shaped and sized critter fell out of the sleeping
bag and ran for its tiny life. It didn't get five feet before a pack of
cats jumped it, and carried it up the stairs to the balcony, and the
cat carrying it threw it from the second story balcony into the living
froom, right about where my aunt had been sleeping. Then, the partial
pack of cats that had stayed downstairs waiting jumped the mouse.
Again, a cat carried it upstairs and threw it down into the waiting
pack, a good fifteen feet down below.The cats did this over, and over
again until the mouse wouldn't run anymore. Then a few cats disappeared
out the cat door. They returned only minutes later with a fresh mouse,
and the game began all over again. This went on for a good hour. I
personally witnessed this because my aunt's shriek when the first mouse
landed on her woke up the whole household. The cats played until they
were exhausted. Then they left the now three or four dead, dying, or
simply greviously wounded mice on the living room floor and took their
first nap of the day.
My aunt Dana now sleeps a bed when she comes to visit.
I am no more or less gifted than anyone else I think, when trying to
understand animal behavior. What I took away from the Night of the Mice
was that the cats had come up with a game that was fun, enormous fun,
and every last one of them enjoyed playing, *enormously*. They ganged
together and played this game three or four dawns that we know of that
summer, until the teenaged cats were given away one by one, and we were
left with just the two original cats. (One with a freshly shaved and
spayed belly!) They didn't eat the mice, they didn't need the food. It
was a game. It was, simply, the thrill of the kill. Over and over and
over again, the thrill of the life or death chase, again and again.
Until they tired out from all the running up and down the stairs, and
let the last victim limp away, or expire on my Mother's nice Persian
rug.
Why should it disturb us to imagine that animals, like humans, enjoy
killing? Do we think to elevate animals to a finer level of morality?
Why? Do we somehow need them to be better than we are to be worthy of
the least meausre of our devotion? I think that rather demeans animals,
to say that they are "missing" the thrill of the kill, or are somehow
"above" it. Animals are quite capable of selfishness, arrogance,
begging, jeaulosy, hatred, and yes, violence for its own sake. They are
also capable of great kindness and loyalty and altruism. I think that
what sets animals apart from us is their devestating honesty. They love
honestly, they hate unashamedly. And for that, they have my utmost
respect.
Alexandra in MA
[Posted in FML 6226]
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