Jack Sparrow

If you’ve read anything in this blog, you’ll already have realized that we live with cats. For about a year, we also lived with a sparrow, named Jack Sparrow.

Jack lived in the garage and the husband person and I tried on a daily basis to shoo him out of the back door and into the wide blue yonder. The bird would fly from one corner of the garage to the other, but never out the door. He’d come close enough to the door to presumably see and smell the great outdoors but he would never quite leave. He did come close once, flying outside only to flit back inside before I could slam the door shut.

There would be days when I wouldn’t see him and would feel sorrow since I was certain he’d ended up as one of the garage cats’ snack du jour. About that time he’d flit back into the garage from the North side cat house and crap on the dryer – usually on the load of laundry I had just folded.

Not long after we acquired our two legged, twin wing, self-propelled bomber, I went into the garage to find him on the side of the cats’ food dish, scarfing down kitty kibble. As Cressida, Darth Katti, Jingle Bells (AKA Captain Ballsy since he has yet to visit the vet for …ahem…the operation) and Mr. Tibbles were also scarfing down kitty kibble, I figured that was either one soon to be dead sparrow or one really dumb sparrow. Rather bird-witted, actually.

You know how you drive by a car accident and don’t want to look, for fear you’ll see something horrid but you look anyway? That was how I watched the silly bird chomping kitty kibble. Rather than realizing his foolhardy proximity to bird chomping machines, the idiotic bird jumped down into the middle of the dish of kitty kibble.

“Oh crap.” Thought I. “That damn bird is toast.” But he wasn’t. The cats totally ignored the bird as they continued eating. Cressida even swatted Darth Katti when he came close to where the bird was eating.

I waddled at a trot back into the living room to call the husband person from his chair. Right. Remove the husband from the chair after he’s been on his size 9’s for about 12 hours straight to see what was probably a figment of my imagination? Dream on. But eventually I lured into the kitchen (quite falsely, I might add) by the lure of brownies (well, we might have brownies, or fairies, or kobolds, dwarves, leprechauns or some other critter living with us). He cast his eyeballs out onto the garage. I hissed in his ear, “Do you see the bird?”

He grunted once. That usually means “Yes” or “No” or whatever I interpret at the time. This time it meant “Yes, dear, I see the damn bird, now let me go sit back down and watch the 2,394^th showing of the same idiotic law and order program from the inside of my eyelids.”

Captain Sparrow got along with Cressida particularly well. It was not unusual to look in the cat room to see her sleeping, curled up around the bird, or the bird picking at her fur. Talk about strange bedfellows.

I had to put a shallow basin of water out at the cat/bird feeding station so the bird could bathe and not drown in the cats’ deeper water bowl. Since the bird obviously took umbrage at me invading the joint cat/bird space, he’d either crap on the clean laundry or take a bath in his basin, which usually involved a lot of splashing of water which naturally would end up all over me. After a while I learned to watch the cats. If they fled for the safety of the cat house, that generally meant Captain Sparrow was about to take a bath. I also learned how to speed fold clothing with one hand whilst flapping the other around in the air to disrupt his bombing run.

Carl and I were very careful to keep the door between the garage/cat house and the kitchen tightly closed. Despite the glasnost between cat and bird that existed in the Northern Cat House, the cats who dwell in the kitchen and other areas of the house were not so kindly disposed toward birds. I had formed this opinion based on the number of times that one of the non-bird loving cats would ram their catly heads into the windows when a bird landed on the shrubs outside. Also helping me form that opinion was the fact that one of the cats, Luna(tic), is absolute death to mice. Unlike our neighbors, we have no problems with mice, thanks to the valiant efforts of our resident rodent exterminator, Luna. A Tonkinese mix, Luna has dozens of mice, voles, moles, lizards and one particularly slow grass snake to her credit. If it has invaded the inside space, it's hers.

As the Kitchen Cat Crew never evinced a desire to explore the garage or Northern Cat House (AKA Kitty Domicile Number 2) and they did not mind the occasional visit from one of their northern neighbors, Mr. Tibbles, Darth Katti and Jingle Bells would often stroll in for a friendly visit. I suspect they also came for a bit of feline gossip and naturally informed the other cats of the bird in residence. As Sneaky Pie Brown, co-authoress of some of my favorite books once said, “Death To All Vermin!” Luna agrees, especially if the vermin has two legs and wings and tastes surprisingly of chicken. Luna adores chicken.

Unfortunately, one day I did not quite shut the garage door behind me and turned around to see the door open and Luna standing there in rodent chomping position. I screamed at her to move and tried to shut the door, but Captain Sparrow flew in. Luna had him on the floor and his neck broken in less time than a scream. Should I admit I cried or would that seem a little sappy? I guess it is, but I did cry. I also didn’t let Luna have the bird.

Before I could get a paper towel to wrap the little body in, Cressida had come into the kitchen. Cressida has never entered the kitchen before, nor has she since. She picked up the bird and returned to the cat house. I went out there to take the bird from her; after all, one does not eat one’s friends after they have outgrown their bodies. But instead of eating the bird, she was curled around him, pushing him with her nose. The little head flopped back and she curled around him even tighter. I used the paper towel to wipe my eyes.

Over the rest of the day, she’d carry him around the cat room, gently prodding him with her nose, making a little trilling sound. At the end, she carried him to the feeding station and put him down next to the bowl. Cressida looked at me, gave the bird a last push of her nose and returned to the cat house. In all her years, this was the first and only time she has made eye contact with me. She watched as I wrapped him carefully. Carl buried the little body outside Cressida’s window while she looked on.

Goodbye Captain Sparrow. She misses you still.