Luci’s Diary. The world's full of strangers, but some of them are just friends waiting to play with you. 

August 2015

Squirrels! They’re wonderful. I discovered them this week. The humans say they’ve been around the whole time, and they couldn’t understand that I’d never spotted them previously. But I have now. What a great game it is to try to catch them in the open, before they can shoot up a tree.

I knew about birds already. Specially crows. They like to stand around in the park just waiting for me to chase them. That’s such fun! They wait until I’m really close – do they think I’m going to change my mind and stop or something? – and then they go flapping off making that strange cawing sound.

I’m really quick these days, so I can keep up with them for a while even when they’re in the air. What a great game.

And in the park with the lake, there are ducks too. I nearly caught one the other day. It took off for the water when I came running up, but didn’t get high enough to get over the railings, so it flew into them and came crashing back down to earth. If it hadn’t been able to slip through the bars, I’d have had it.

Come to think of it, I’m not sure what I’d have done if I had got it. Maybe it’s just as well I didn’t. It could have been embarrassing. I don’t think my jaws would fit around it. Anyway, the fun’s chasing the birds, not catching them. 

Which I never have.

As well as birds, there’s other dogs. Not the big ones. With the big ones, I find the most sensible thing is to keep behind the legs of whichever human I’m out with. 

By the way, you don’t have to be really big to be big as far as I’m concerned.

But with the ones my size, it’s just play, play, play. Which I enjoy all the more now that I’m so quick. There’s not many of them can get away from me or, when we turn around and chase the other way, catch me. In fact, the only annoying thing about them is that sometimes they just stop and lie down panting. I have to keep running up to them to get them back on their feet.

Got to be quick if you're going to catch me...

The human puppies are good too. I mentioned the ones I played with in the park before, but there are others I meet in different places. That always works out well. There was the one from Scotland who used to give me treats when she decided to let me train her, though I think she may have thought she was training me.

With my good friend in Scotland

And the other day we went and saw another favourite of mine who was always ready to run around, sit around, play around or stroke me. Little girl human puppies? You can never have too many of them, I reckon.

With another good friend

What a great world. Full of strangers you have to approach warily, or back away from. But every now and then, one of them turns out to be a friend who was just waiting to meet you. And a friend’s someone you can play with.

Like the human puppies. Small dogs. Crows. Ducks. And now squirrels.

Though the crows, ducks and squirrels may not like me quite as much as I like them.

Misty meets his match

It's been exciting to be spectators to a life and death struggle going on just across the street from us, between land and air power, fought out with bitter deliberation.

It all started a couple of weeks ago. Danielle called me to witness a strange sight. On the roof of one of the garages behind our garden was Misty, our cat, flat on his belly between two crows. He was in his habitual hunting stance, crouched, ready to pounce, birds after all being no more to him than conveniently air-delivered parcels of meat.

Not these two. In turn, each would move in closer to Misty, tempting him, provoking him to attack; if he moved, off the bird would fly, and the partner would immediately take over, distracting his attention, teasing and provoking him too.

The message seemed clear. ‘You want to catch those fat lazy pigeons? Go right ahead. They’re easy game. You want to catch us? You’d better learn some new tricks. You’re nothing like quick enough or cunning enough.’

Why were they behaving that way? It seemed extraordinary to court such danger.

We found out the answer at the weekend when we were woken at 5:00 in the morning by a pandemonium of cawing from across the road. One of the crows’ fledglings was on the ground. It was out of its nest far too soon and couldn’t begin to fly. Easy prey for a powerful cat undeterred by any sense of compassion.

That’s Misty through and through. He’s one of the biggest cats I know, in his prime, quick and strong. Neighbours of ours have complained to us that he’s an exceptionally vicious cat and that we ought to do something about him. I’m not sure what I could actually do – I’ve tried reasoning – ‘help yourself to the pigeons, carriers of disease as they are and more than plentiful enough, but please draw the line at blackbirds’ – but does he listen? I might as well be talking to myself.

Ruthless predator

Inevitably, in that fateful dawn, he’d caught the crow fledgling and caused all the commotion.

Danielle rushed out to try to save the bird, but she needn’t have bothered. The wildly cawing parents had set about Misty with resolution and single-mindedness that fully matched his. Pecking and clawing at him, they quickly showed him the error of his ways.

So clearly in their garage roof dance they had been giving him a warning and a chance. ‘Fancy our young, do you?’ they had been saying. ‘Think again, sonny, think again. You may be biting off more than you can chew.’

It didn’t take Danielle’s intervention to get him drop the young bird, the parents had seen to that. The fledgling was apparently unhurt, though presumably shaken by his brush with death. And Misty’s lesson seems, at least for now, to have sunk in.

A morsel not on his menu today

The next morning there was cawing from across the road again, but in a much more restrained way. When I got downstairs, Misty was outside the door, keen to get inside. The crows had seen him and their cawing was just a further warning, to remind him of his lesson.

He was beating a hasty retreat, thoroughly cowed. Or perhaps thoroughly cawed.