This Is How We Say Good Morning

Now that the weather has taken a turn for the better, the little gray neighbor kitty Stryker visits us frequently. He spends hours in our yard and on our porch. He likes to sit on my husband's lap and preen, and then nap.

First thing in the morning, the kitty often shows up. And he sits outside the front door waiting for one of us to go out. When you open the door, this is what he does: he stretches his one paw out, as though to touch you (and he sometimes does). It is a charming greeting.

Alas, there was a tragedy in the yard precipitated by the kitty on this day. My husband came back indoors shortly before lunchtime with a face dark as a thundercloud. He had just discovered that (in spite of the fact that he wears a bell) the kitty had killed one of our yard birds, a robin. My husband took the bird from him, but alas it was too late.  :-(

Now, we love our birds. My husband feeds them several times a day. But it is true that we have little influence over who eats whom in the yard. The kitty is not ours. We did not let him out, and we cannot put him back in. We do not feed him. He is his own creature, with his own comings and goings.

So my husband and I had a conversation about the morality of being a carnivore.
Husband: He's a murderer. But then again he's a carnivore. He eats meat. What do you think is in the cat food that we feed Dexter?
Me: Birds we don't know?

Our soundtrack song is about cats. Here are the Stray Cats, with the Stray Cat Strut.