{"id":2902,"date":"2011-10-14T13:15:27","date_gmt":"2011-10-14T20:15:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/?p=2902"},"modified":"2011-12-12T05:55:09","modified_gmt":"2011-12-12T12:55:09","slug":"a-little-bit-of-perfect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/?p=2902","title":{"rendered":"A Little Bit of Perfect."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It was bound to happen.\u00a0 Even the cutest of kittens has a tendency to spread his claws and kill.\u00a0 But, still, my heart dropped when I happened to glance out the window during my morning coffee and saw Little Bit dragging a body through the woods.\u00a0 It was bad enough I woke to the chickens pecking up the freshly laid grass seed by the ditch.\u00a0 And that I discovered the daylily bulbs I left on the counter overnight had been heartily chewed on by the dogs.\u00a0 (Are daylily bulbs poison?\u00a0 If so, do dogs have to eat them to get the poison?\u00a0 Or just lick them and bite off the green sprouts?\u00a0 Do I really want to know by googling it or do I just want to ignore it and hope for the best?)\u00a0\u00a0 Of course, my coffee filter had collapsed during brewing, leaving me with a cup so full of grounds that\u00a0 I was forced to put in 200 calories worth of Almond Joy flavored creamer to drown the taste.\u00a0 And now this.<\/p>\n

I had told the children that Little Bit would have to go if he started killing chicks or ducklings or keets.\u00a0 It just wasn’t possible to do anything else.\u00a0 He couldn’t be a solely indoor cat and I couldn’t have him butchering everything that hatched.\u00a0 I had thought that the ferociousness of the mother hens and ducks and guineas (they used to chase him off their young with brutal attacks) when he was a kitten would dissuade him.\u00a0 But apparently now that he had filled out, so had his appetite.\u00a0 The little gray body swinging from his jaws was sure to be one of the 8 week old keets, just starting to stray from their momma.<\/p>\n

I immediately sent the children out to investigate because:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 That’s what they deserve for getting up so early on a day they’re off school.\u00a0 Especially since they promised me they’d sleep in when I let them stay up the night before to watch Transformers 3<\/span>, um, The Little Mermaid.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 I already have grounds in my coffee.\u00a0 Don’t I at least deserve a break from dead bodies???!!!<\/p>\n

While the kids were checking things out, I surveyed the contents of the pantry and wondered if they’d be up for oatmeal after their gruesome morning task.\u00a0 Figured I’d better go with Cheerios.\u00a0 There’s no mistaking that for guts or brain matter.\u00a0 But even after the bowls and spoons were set out, the children hadn’t returned.\u00a0 I went back to the window and saw, to my horror, that they were dancing and skipping around Little Bit,\u00a0 dragging the dead body through the leaves for him to chase and swinging it above his head for him to bat, inbetween ear rubs and chin scratches.<\/p>\n

I rushed outside because:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 In their overtired, desensitized-to-violence (darn that Transformers 3<\/span> Little Mermaid) minds,\u00a0 they apparently forgot that Little Bit was not to be rewarded for killing the farm animals.\u00a0 Killing guinea keets was bad, bad, bad!<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 The leaves are starting to fall and if the neighbors can see the kids cavorting with dead bodies in their pajamas, there will probably be another call from the social worker.\u00a0 And that whole incident with the snake heads on stakes around the nest boxes was difficult enough to explain.<\/p>\n

“WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE YOU DOING????” I screeched from the deck, in my best Roseanne Barr imitation.<\/p>\n

“Look”, they exclaimed, “look, look, look what Little Bit killed,” and flung the body at my feet.<\/p>\n

Could it be?\u00a0 Could it really be?\u00a0 That our incredibly easy to care for, incredibly sweet barn cat was smart enough to know not to kill chicks or ducklings or keets?\u00a0 That somewhere inside that little bitty head of his, he could distinguish between the offspring of the farm and the nemesis of the farm?\u00a0 That blackberry-stealing, gourmet-bird-seed-gorging, feed-trough-foraging, feed-bag-gnawing, tulip-bulb-eating, enemy of all things sacred to a successful farm and garden.\u00a0 Could it be that Little Bit, in his infinite wisdom, had hunted down and killed…..<\/p>\n

…A SQUIRREL!!!!!<\/p>\n

Hallelujah, can I get an Amen!\u00a0 Let the dancing and singing commence!\u00a0 Our Little Bit has made the passage from adorable kitten to successful barn cat.\u00a0 Let the mice and rats in all the feed rooms quake, let all the moles and voles in carrot patches tremble, let the\u00a0 squirrels cower in their holes in fear, a warrior has been born and we call him LITTLE BIT!\u00a0 (Hmmm….he might need a name change…)<\/p>\n

So, as it turns out, not all days that start with grounds in your coffee, are destined to end badly.\u00a0 And because Little Bit is an absolutely perfect cat, he did another amazing thing.\u00a0 After he had exhausted all the fun in the dead squirrel,\u00a0 he calmly carried it into the pasture to Bruno, the livestock guardian dog.\u00a0 He laid the squirrel by Bruno’s feet, allowing Bruno to scoop it up and carry it around joyfully all day.\u00a0 A squirrel!\u00a0 Those miserable creatures that have tormented dogkind since the beginning of time—happily cavorting in the yard but dashing up the tree trunk to safety in a the blink of an eye,\u00a0 gamboling from branch to branch in the canopy without a care for any dogs barking helplessly below.\u00a0 Bruno had heard tales of dogs capturing squirrels but he never thought he, a lowly and\u00a0 humble member of the working class, would know the bliss of that fluffy tail hanging from his jaws.\u00a0 He carried that squirrel until his jaws ached from trying to smile around that furry little carcass.\u00a0 I know you don’t believe me that he was smiling.\u00a0 So I’ll show you a picture.\u00a0 But don’t show anyone else.\u00a0 And I’m deleting it from the My Pictures folder.\u00a0 ‘Cause you never know when that social worker is going to stop by…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was bound to happen.\u00a0 Even the cutest of kittens has a tendency to spread his claws and kill.\u00a0 But, still, my heart dropped when I happened to glance out the window during my morning coffee and saw Little Bit dragging a body through the woods.\u00a0 It was bad enough I woke to the chickens […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[109,94,110],"class_list":["post-2902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-sweet-spot","tag-cat","tag-livestock-guardian","tag-squirrel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2902"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3215,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2902\/revisions\/3215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}