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Pastimes : Thread Morons
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To: tonto who wrote (10969)3/11/2004 4:16:00 PM
From: Michelino  Read Replies (2) of 12810
 
I tell you a long story about that same cat that illustrates your first point. One day this cat, who had cleaned out every trace of vermin as well as all the bunny rabbits in the surrounding area, travelled up to the barnyard and brought me back half a rat as a present. I was disgusted when he came in the screen door and dropped it in my lap. A week later, he brought another very large rat down from the grain shed, but this one was only half dead or least was pretending. The cat dropped the rat at my feet and went off to wash himself in the corner of the kitchen. As I looked down the rat opened one of its eyes and slowly came back to life. I grew both enraged at the cat and terrified of the rat. I grabbed a broom, which wasn't the best weapon, and started battling the rat all the while yelling at the freakin Cat to start acting like a cat again. But the cat just sat and stared as I tried to finish off the rat. Afterwards, I decided that the incident must have been caused by a very strange aberration in the cat's personality because as I mentioned, the kitty was a legendary hunter and killer that refused to act even as the rat lunged for me. I finally squished it.

Twenty years later, I was watching a PBS show where it was shown that killing among cats is more of a tradition that is passed between generations than genetic behavior. A cat teaches kittens to kill prey in stages, first by bringing in a dead animal for the kittens to play with and then the adult progresses by showing the kittens different stages of dying or dazed prey. The process is complete when the adult brings in some animal that is only slightly stunned and the kittens kill it. It then dawned on me that I had been wrong all those years about my cat's feline abilities that day with the rat. It had been displaying the essence of catness for it was teaching me to kill. And the cat succeeded in its mission even while I hadn't clue what was going on.
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