Thursday, October 4, 2012

Cat plus moths equals chaos

With the arrival of the spring a new horror has entered our lives. The warmer weather has bought little brown moths - slender flutterers that can work their way past the fly screen to adore the light in the bathroom.  This is driving Toast, our adolescent cat, into a frenzy.  She is climbing the screens and the curtains, pushing things off ledges and shelves, falling into the toilet, all in a desperate attempt to get them rascally moths.

We never had this problem with her predecessor, Mouse.  Now in her day Mouse did like to leap for a Bogong, but this is quite a different kettle of moth.  If you are unaware, a Bogong is a big, fat, slow moth, also brown and hopelessly attracted to lights.  The Bogongs will pass here in their millions soon on their migration.  Mouse wasn't averse to catching them in the air above the back door mat but that was a few years ago now, before she lost her leap. In any case Bogongs weren't a problem.  They rarely came inside mainly because you could catch them with a tennis racket.

You can see the attraction of a Bogong to a cat.  They are slow, vague, and there is good eating on them.

The sad little things Toast is chasing are not legitimate prey.  Mouse never bothered with things that tasted like dust.

It is just that Toast is such a keen participant.  The husband caught her rolling a snail around on the cement, tossing it in the air, batting it off into the lawn only to pounce again.  You can't be too carefully with your common garden snail, though.  They can be very tricky buggers if you don't watch them like a hawk.  A mere 20 minutes of inattention and they will have found a fence to walk up.

On the up side, when the Bogongs do arrive we can probably skip feeding the cat.  Damn!  That won't work; we don't let her out after dark.   Maybe we could take the screen off the bathroom window, leave the door shut, the light on, and Toast in there to feast.  Mind you, I don't fancy stepping over leftover wings and other less tasty morsels on my way to the morning wee.

This may take some further thought.  In the mean time, she is making daytime hay with the cabbage moths so that should take some of the stress off the husbands brassicas (it is not dirty - look it up).