From: ericj@hwcae.Honeywell.COM (Eric Jacobsen)
Subject: Re: More strange behavior with prey
Organization: Honeywell, Air Transport Division; Phoenix, AZ
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 02:34:33 GMT

In article <1992Sep14.210225.11488@ncar.ucar.edu> ilana@kiowa.scd.ucar.edu (Ilana Stern) writes:

   He tossed it up into the air, and when it landed on the patio he jumped
   onto it and *rolled* back and forth over it.  Then he grabbed it in his
   teeth and did it again:  toss, pounce, roll.  At first, it seemed as
   though he was trying to play with it, and disappointed that it wasn't
   "playing back."  But I'd never seen him rolling on top of things -- that
   looked like some sort of ritual display, "See what I have caught!" After 
   a few iterations of this, he settled down to some serious chomping, and
   soon the rat was just a bloodstain on the patio.

   Is my interpretation of this as a display behavior correct?  Do other
   cats do this?  (The other time he ate a mouse in front of me, he picked
   it up and dropped it several times, but he didn't throw it into the air
   or jump after it, or roll on it.)

A few months ago I noticed a little blob of something on our roof that hadn't
been there a half our or so earlier. I suspected that a bird had chosen
our house to expire on, but couldn't tell for sure and wasn't in the mood
to get the ladder out and go inspect.

Soooo, I commandeeer the cat and hoist her up on the edge of the roof and
point at the blob. Usually she's really good at interpreting me pointing
at things, but this time she decided as long as she was on the roof she
shoud play behind the basketball backboard for a while. Tiring of the
backboard she walks over the roof within 6 inches of the blob and heads
toward the backyard tree that she uses to get off the roof.

I run into the backyard to try to get her to go back toward the blob.
She's halfway down the backside of the roof when I suddenly see her
perk her head up with this expression like, "Wait a sec, was that a
bird I passed back there?" Cat immediately reverses direction and trots
up toward blob.

I run into the front again just in time to see cat grab blob body and do
the quick, low-slung carrying prey run toward the back tree again.

I run into the backyard again in time to meet cat coming down tree with
the fresh remains of a sparrow.

Anyway, to get to your point, finally, I let her play with it a while
since she'd been good enough to get it off of the roof for me. She did
a *lot* of the tossing it into the air stuff and rolled on it a few
times.

--
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* Eric Jacobsen        Honeywell Inc.                           *
|     1-602-436-3941   Commercial Flight Systems, Air Transport |
* HVN       436-3941   US Mail: P.O. Box 21111, MS 2Q34C1       *
| FAX 1-602-436-1310   Phoenix AZ 85036-1111                    |
* INet: ericj@hwcae.honeywell.com                               *
| UUCP: uunet!hwcae.honeywell.com!ericj@uunet.uu.net            |
* The opinions expressed are my own and therefore better        *
| thought out than my employer's.                               |
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