There’s a little black cat in my neighbourhood which may or may not be a stray (it has no collar but looks well-cared-for). The other day I went out into the back garden to check on a plant, when I saw the cat’s head poking through the fence. When I followed the direction of the cat’s gaze I saw that it was locked on a young squirrel in the corner between the fence and the house. So intent were the two animals on their predicament that I was able to take a photograph.
The cat came slowly through the gap under the fence, its eyes on the squirrel the whole time. If I made a move towards it, the cat would quickly retreat to the other side of the fence. The squirrel, for its part, backed away ever more tightly into the corner.
I was a little bit torn as to what to do, as on one hand this was just part of nature, yet on the other hand if the cat was indeed someone’s pet, it was just following its instinct to hunt and probably wouldn’t eat the squirrel. I decided to try to give the squirrel a chance and tried a couple of times to get the cat to back off and give the squirrel a chance to run away. However, the squirrel did not move and the cat kept returning to the garden to stare it down.
In the end, I decided to let nature take its course and got on with what I was doing. A few minutes later, I saw the cat walking down the driveway and assumed the squirrel was a goner. However, when I looked in the back garden, it was still there cowering in the corner. When I returned a little later, it was gone and I figured it had made its escape.
The sad conclusion to this little tale is that the following evening I was leaving the house and spotted the squirrel, dead, lying at the front of the house. It showed no signs of being mauled, so I can only assume that the exertions of the previous day had been too much for it.
The impression that stayed with me about the whole encounter was of the absolute, unwavering determination of the cat to hunt its prey. Every time I stepped forward and it backed away through the fence, it would immediately return as soon as I was gone to resume its stalking.
This encounter was, as I said at the beginning of this post, all part of the food chain, Lord Tennyson’s “nature red in tooth and claw”. It did give me an appreciation for humanity’s privileged position in that food chain, though, and gratitude for the fact that most days at least we are not in immediate danger of becoming something else’s breakfast.
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