He's a Hunter

[desperance]

Cats do famously like to fetch their kills home, laying out little corpses on the landing for their humans to admire. Something like bringing in the shopping, I guess, and/or offering little gifts to secure a relationship.

Barry's no different, except that he doesn't currently have access to little corpses, so he rummages. This is a good house for rummaging, many unregarded corners and much loose aggregation of clutter that a cat can dig around in.

He finds small soft things, and leaves them here and there in the hall/stairs/landings matrix (again a good house, many stairs, many landings: only two bedrooms, mind, but the layout's a bit eccentric). Often it's socks, I never knew there were so many strays; this morning it's a triumph, he's slaughtered a crocodile. Just a baby one, perhaps the length of my forearm, and fortunately a cuddly one, not the kind that comes with scales and entrails and teeth. I wish I'd seen him with it; that's the trouble with a companion whose sleep is out of phase with your own, half their fun-time is your down-time. I was wondering just the other day, where he is at night, because he's generally not with me; now I know, he's off adventuring in other realms, and fetching his trophies home. This one is pre-stuffed; now all we need is a mounting.

Comments

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Hubble liked freshly laundered socks rolled into a ball. He would throw them over his shoulder repeatedly. But they had to be fresh, and they had to be rolled.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Yup. Barry's first adventure into sockdom in this house consisted of his digging up - Lord knows where - two socks balled together. I do not ball socks together, however practical the idea is, and I do not recognise these socks. The appeal to Barry is fairly obvious, as the object - considered as an object - is clean and kind of rat-sized, rat-shaped (with one floppy foot as a tail) and very much fit for purpose, which is to be played with, borne about, displayed, deposited in new and interesting places. All of that, it's an ongoing adventure. I'm still fairly sure that it came from outer space (that being defined as anywhere beyond this house & yard, where Barry Does Not Go, at least not while Chaz is watching). I think he has a secret interdimensional doorway in his head. There's probably room for one, in among the few stray thoughts. "See Chaz. Purr. Attack!"