Jun 09 2001
Cleo vs. the pigeons
Our cat Cleo just hates pigeons.
She is sitting on top of the refrigerator, which affords her a fine view out of the kitchen windows to the back stairs. Pigeons like to perch here and have even laid eggs in our planter boxes of catnip (I’m sorry to say we disposed of the eggs). The people who bought the house next door last year at the height of real estate madness have spent a lot of time and money attempting to pigeon-proof their investment. They have been only partially successful, but their anti-pigeon campaign has led the offending pigeons to spend more time chez nous, to Cleo’s unending fury. I really think she might like to move next door to the pigeon-free zone. That, or just one chance to go outside and show them who’s boss. She’d probably like that even better.
So there she sits, elegant in her shiny black fur, her golden eyes narrowed as she gazes at the enemy pigeons with unrelenting concentration. If looks could kill, neither we nor the Next Doors would have to worry about the pigeons anymore.
However, Cleo is not content to merely stare at them. She tells them off in Cleo-ese, which has a guttural quality (somewhat Teutonic in nature) but blended with a certain Asianness. She is, after all, a very nearly or even possibly pure-bred Bombay, so she looks like a very small and sleek panther. Her speech is closer to actual words than any cat I have ever heard, almost as if she has been studying our own strange language and is right on the verge of being able to speak to us in it. And I think, if I just listen closely enough, I will begin to undestand what she’s saying. But although I haven’t broken the code yet, I’m glad I’m not one of those pigeons.
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