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]