Our cat, on one of his occasional forays into the outside world, recently killed a mole.
Now, that may not sound like an accomplishment, but it had us scratching our heads. Our feline makes Garfield look both svelte and industrious. Though he's the size of a Maine Coon, I once looked up information on the breed. The source said that Maine Coon cats are intelligent, inquisitive, and energetic. Our guy scores a zero out of three. We figure he's just a big tabby. In fact, even in the general feline population, he's proof positive that, for an average to work, someone has to be below it. Graceful and well-coordinated, he is not.
We once found him in a confrontation with a field mouse. The mouse was definitely the more aggressive of the pair. When it became apparent our hunter was unlikely to rid the house of said varmint, I caught it in a shoebox, carried it to the end of the driveway, and introduced it the corn field on the other side of the road. Yeah, I'm a wuss. I don't want them in the house, but I can't just kill them. And when you live in the country, they seem an inevitable part of the landscape.
I should mention that the cat has managed to do away with the odd mouse. We figure that his hulking size might scare to death those with weak hearts. It seems the only rational explanation.
His success with the mole also seemed unlikely. Not only was it in the unfettered confines of the great outdoors, the rodent presumably had access to tunnels, guaranteed to befuddle the cat's weak mind.
That is, until we uncovered the missing link. My daughter noticed a flock of starlings, agitated over something on the ground. At first, she thought it was a frog. I watched, and decided it was a rodent, too big to be a mouse. It wasn't that close to the house, but, given the possibility of a rat, within viewing distance is too close. I headed out to investigate.
It was a mole, careening over the ground like a drunken sailor. Neither the vibration of my footsteps nor the threat of my proximity seemed to disturb it in the least. I've no idea what it was doing, or what it had been drinking, but it continued on its serpentine path, around a tree and across the yard, oblivious to my presence. Never mind the cat, I'm sure I could have caught it without trouble.
The mystery of the cat's success is solved. Now, I'd just like to know what the mole was up to.
