I like a brave cat but I've never known a cat that was brave all on its own. That's what human beings are for, especially cat owners. We're "backup" when a cat wants to be brave but just can't seem to muster all the courage necessary for a particular cat task.They might be able to come up with, say, half the courage necessary— maybe a little more or a little less — and that's all I require from a cat, male or female. The willingness to do a little work around the house and around the yard for his or her keep. It gives them a sense of worth that a totally lazy and dependent cat might not ever get to experience. The cat in this brief "cat story" is not really mine but my mother's, a seventeen-year-old orange-and-white tomcat. His name is Lucky and I've blogged about him before (click on the cat clipart image for that story).
Anyway, about seven or eight years ago when Lucky was nine or ten years old, I spotted him being cornered by four deer between the chain link fence surrounding our little pond and a big wall of briar bushes. This particular spot is where I used to pitch horseshoes and it's about a thirty yard "holler" across the pond from our birdfeeder. The deer were actually eating grass over there and Lucky seemed to be watching them from inside one of the horseshoe pits. Then one of the deer started stamping his front hooves at Lucky and that made me feel protective.
"Hey!" I hollered at the deer and that made all four deer stop and look at me from across the pond. "Hey, that cat's not bothering you. That's our cat and you know that. This is his yard so you guys be nice to him, now." I knew these deer didn't understand English but I know animals understand a person's tone of voice. And I like to think that I have a little telepathic communications link with all animals. I work on it and it seems to work back. Anyway, the deer went back to grazing on the blade grass and the dandelion leaves and that gave Lucky an excuse to suddenly feel brave as hell.
To my utter amazement and sheer delight, Lucky left the horseshoe pit and began threading his way between the legs of the grazing deer. Threading and weaving and rubbing and putting his scent on them, like they were now part of his special world. But the real shocker was that the deer let Lucky rub up against their legs as they grazed. All four of them. I turned back to the house and saw my mother watching from the den's sliding glass doors, shaking her head in disbelief.
"All he needed was a little backup," she said as I stepped inside the house and I knew she was right. Hell, if I was a house cat only several inches high, surrounded by four deer several feet high, I'd need a little "backup" myself. And I'd feel damn "lucky" to get it, too.
