One day last week, a neighbor asked me if I had a little grey tabby cat… one had been visiting his place recently. I assumed it was Hoover as she often disappears back thru the woods behind the house. So far, she seems scared of the road out front and so confines her travels into the woods around my place and back to Frank’s behind me.
Hoover got
her name from the way she attacked food when she first came here. Her dish was
so clean you would not have known any food had even been in it. The bowl of
crunchies looked vacuumed including the floor around it. In some other
countries, the word Hoover is synonymous with cleaning. A neighbor from the UK
says he is going to Hoover his car when he just means cleaning it out, not
necessarily vacuuming. Hoover still acts like any meal is the first she has had
in a week… often her week is 2 hours long! And she eats her food as rapidly as
she can then jumps down to push Spook away from his food and clean his bowl up,
too. Sigh. Poor old Spook, never the fighter, at age 14 he just moseys away and
takes a nap. (You know “the grass is always greener???” Well for Hoover, the
food in the other bowl is always better.)
Anyway, the
point of this post is to give anyone interested a view of this little girl
kitty… a strange little thing, totally unspectacular in appearance, who
squeaks, does not meow, and pesters poor old Spook because she so wants to
play. Poor old man. But, he is no longer growling at her and actually does play
wrestle a bit. Then it is serious nap time.
Hoover is a
great hunter. She stalks anything that moves, including deer. I have watched
her do that, moving from bush to bush, belly to the ground, hiney twitching in anticipation
of the moment of attack. I have never had a camera ready when she does these
things, so you will just have to take my word for it. But last week, oh how I wish
I had had a video camera for her last great adventure. To start with, I heard
the bird – a very distinctive cry. So I looked around to see where it was. I have
a family of them that live on my land and I feel so fortunate. I have posted
about them before. This time, it sounded like the bird was up in the big
hackberry tree behind my house. It definitely was close by… while scanning the
tree for a glimpse of its distinctive colors and markings, I saw something else
moving slowly up a big branch of the tree. As you have seen, Hoover is ‘dressed’
in perfect camouflage, she can disappear almost anywhere… but this bird can’t.
It squawked
again and flapped its wings at her. Hoover paused blending in with the bark of
the tree, but she had definitely interrupted its snacking on the tree. We all
held still, probably barely breathing. I tried to sneak closer, basically not
believing my eyes… Hoover was stalking a Pileated Woodpecker that is probably
bigger than she is. She crept up her branch a little further. She was probably
less than 5 feet away from him. I thought, my god, what if this was a raptor
and not a woodpecker? We do have a family of red-tail hawks here, too, and a
family of great horned owls, both of which could pick her up in a heartbeat and
have a tasty meal for their young ones.
One more
sneaky creep up the branch and the woodpecker had had enough. It opened its
huge wings and flew out away from the tree, but then turned and flew back
aiming straight for Hoover! I remembered a mocker than used to dive-bomb Punkin
like that. I thought OMG! That long pointed beak would totally skewer Poor
little Hoovie! OH NO! But the bomber jet
pulled up in plenty of time to miss Hoover, BUT, that dumb cat stood on her
hind feet to make a grab at the bird! YIKES! What kind of an idiot is
this???? Needless to say, she missed, in
fact she almost fell out of the tree in her excitement. The Pileated flew off
to snack at another tree deeper in the woods and Hoover backed down the tree. I
started to breathe again, but I swear, my knees were weak!
Anyway,
here are a few shots I took of Hoovie and Spook out in the yard the other day.
Spook is still sleeping in his favorite Adirondack. I keep a big board on it to
keep him dry when it sprinkles and he doesn’t want to move. It also keeps him
in the shade, and it gives Hoover a place to nap or wash after she gets tired
of pestering him.
And in case you forgot, our Pileated Woodpecker
