hissy fit on a grapevine

helpful hint: click on the photos to enlarge. they're a bit grainy, but you can really see the bird rage. you want to see bird rage, don't you?

coming back to brooklyn didn't mean we'd left the wildlife behind. we came back to two hostile cats (no, they didn't miss us. they resented our return.) and an endless supply of squirrels and their flying counterparts, pigeons. first, the cats are inside cats. that's because our last outside cat went to the great catnip factory in the sky courtesy of local traffic. so these two are indoor cats. jim, a very mellow 17 pound marmalade monster doesn't seem to mind, but ruby, the one who hates all things, does not want to be an inside cat. she was a rescue cat and was found close to feral and "rehabilitated" at a shelter and she has hated us since the day when she was eight months old and we brought home jim so she'd have a pal. he was three or four times her size and she immediately tried to kill him. he does not spend time with her now, choosing the uneven attention he gets from the small dogs over the consistent nastiness she dishes out. but she is very pretty and we are mildly afraid of her so she continues to control our house, the other cat, both dogs and, of course, us.

and then yesterday i opened the back door and she escaped. i yelled her name because she knows who she is and in fact she did turn around. she looked at me. her face said, "you are stupid. i am leaving." all this after i brushed her stupid fur all morning and brought her canned food as a treat. ruby is small and wily and impossible to catch so although i went after her, i knew i wasn't coming back in the house with her just yet.

i went back in the house to finish up some devil pants for a friend's new baby and heard a horrible ruckus out back. screaming. now, we have a tiny back yard that shares a fence with nyc transit's glorious q train, which runs in a cut below the house. the train platform for the southbound train is just below our fence and sometimes we hear drunks or deranged folks ranting from the platform. i didn't pay it much attention. but it continued. it sounded like squirrels in a lawn mower. or at least what i imagine they'd sound like. horrible. screeching. swirling.

so i went to the back porch. i could hear them squeaking so loud i figured there must be five hundred of whatever they were out there. but there were only two. two mockingbirds. they were tearing around from tree to grapevine to porch rail. you wouldn't imagine four ounces of bird could do what they were doing, making such a racket. and then i thought of ruby. she must have climbed a tree and destroyed a nest. that's how they were acting, like she'd destroyed their family. certainly she's capable of such things. her hatred extends far beyond her immediate family. and when i looked around i couldn't find her. i scanned the whole yard, looked up in the tree, under the porch. the screaming continued. she must be somewhere because they were still flipping out. i looked past the porch, behind the tree and there, under a big pile of metal scaffold junk our landlord keeps against the fence, sat ruby, cowering, terrified. i have never in my life seen her like this and i'm mildly ashamed to admit that for a brief moment i simply savored the image. but she was really scared. she was convinced those birds were going to kill her and i wasn't so sure they didn't have a right to. she looked very guilty. but i went out under the canopy of screaming and called her. she belly crawled a few feet and i scooped her up. generally, picking up ruby requires something similar to hobbling a barnyard animal. you grab her front ankles in one hand and the back ones in the other and carry her with the claws pointing away the shortest distance possible. if you choose to do something looser, you look like something that could be used in a horror movie. but not this time. this time she leapt into my arms and shoved herself against my chest like a normal pet. it was terrifying.

i brought her in and put her down. the birds continued their swearing for at least ten minutes more, and she was back at the door watching them before they were through. i suspect ruby's brain has a memory loop of about two minutes most of the time and i wonder how she can maintain her hatred of us so consistently and purely. although right now she is sitting next to me on the couch, purring. if i just continue to sit here and i don't make eye contact or try to pet her, she may continue to let me live here and occasionally rescue her from mockingbirds.