My cat is a great hunter. Recently, he caught two mice within 60 minutes and devoured them under my bed in the dead of night. I heard it all. He has caught pigeons and now he has brought a magpie into the home. The reason why he is able to catch a magpie is partly my fault. I feed squirrels. Squirrels chuck a lot of squirrel feed onto the ground. Pigeons and magpies eat this food from the ground. My cat stalks the birds and he has regrettably on occasions caught them. I can't do much about it and I don't want to stop feeding squirrels. Although I do warn them when he goes out so I do my bit to stop him attacking birds.
My cat brings a magpie into the home and there is bird poo and pee everywhere |
On this occasion I was watching television and I heard a commotion. It was noisy and it sounded disturbing. I got up and immediately saw that a magpie was flying around my kitchen banging into walls, windows and the bifold doors that lead out to the garden. While the bird was doing this it was pooing and peeing over everything.
I frantically opened the bifold doors. The magpie was constantly charging against them and suddenly there was air and no glass and so he passed through into the back garden where he clung onto a fence for a while, looking over his shoulder at my charging cat. He then flew to another part of the fence and eventually flew out of the garden looking unwell but he made it.
I am sure that he was injured to a certain extent but I would hope that he recovered and is now all right. It took me 20 minutes to clean up while my cat looked on completely nonplussed by all the events. It is just another little episode in the life of a cat caregiver. I even found a scratch on the hardwood floor that wasn't there before. I'm sure it was caused by the magpie as it panicked desperately to get out in complete terror.
When a bird charges against a glass window that hard and does it over and over again with loud thumps it has to be desperately frightened. I'm surprised that they don't knock themselves out. Sometimes they do.
When peace returned to the home, I thought that it might have been a good idea to have filmed the whole thing but that is not my style. I'm not a natural video maker. My first thought is not to exploit the situation and make a video. My first thought is animal welfare; on this occasion to get the bird out of there. This is instinctive and therefore there is no video record of this minor but disturbing event.