Does My Cat Have a Death Wish?

I've mentioned before that we have a huge Muscovy duck with claws, and that we also have an idiot cat, Irving, and a smarter cat, Halley, who likes to egg Irving on to do stupid things.

I guess we should have seen this coming.



Irving has it in his head that he can catch a duck. Yesterday he got right down to the shore, within a very short distance of a group of the smaller ducks, who are still bigger than he is. Halley, of course, was in the background watching. Can you see the little cat smile on her face?



Irving got as close as he could, with the ducks not reacting at all, because of course they know he's an idiot. Afterwards, he and Halley exchanged the cat equivalent of a high-five....



....and then Irving decided to go after Corky, The Duck With Claws.



In the picture above, he looks like he's looking somewhere else, but that's actually a clever tactic designed to avoid Corky's notice....because of course Corky can't see him if Irving's not looking at him. Irving followed the whole duck flock up the hill to their corn bin, and then followed them back down. I'm not sure if they actually didn't notice him, or if he's so inconsequential that it didn't even occur to them to react to him. Probably the latter, but of course he's all puffed up now because he chased the ducks and lived through it.

I'm afraid Irving has a harsh lesson coming, though. The Canada geese have come back. We had 18 for a while yesterday. (Last year they alternated between our pond and our neighbor's pond.) I mentioned to my husband that if we get goslings again this year, Irving might attack them. He just laughed, and then I remembered that the geese parents killed a snake last year. I imagine Irving won't be spending much time down by the pond for a while.

It says a lot when I'm more worried about the cat than about the birds...