Flashes of Panic

(Remind me, someday, to tell the story of why this title is amusing to me.)

So, it was an eventful night.

Cat’s perspective: Best. Toy. Ever.

Cat’s staff perspective: The first clue that there was some rambunctiousness happening out in the big room was the crash which was one of the dining-room chairs falling over. I woke up, concluded that Izzy was up to some mischief, and went back to sleep.

A few minutes later, there was another crash, this time accompanied by loud chittering. At first, cloudy with sleep, I had mechanical thoughts: I thought Iz had managed to get something snagged in the box fan. Within seconds, I had more realistic thoughts: some other live creature was in the apartment. Armed with the flashlight (both as light and club) I looked out into the living room.

Sure enough, there was Iz, sitting proudly behind the bat he had brought to the floor.

(Remind me, someday, to tell the story of how shocked I was when Iz, a strictly indoor cat, caught a mouse.)

The bat flopped. Iz might be a great hunter, but he’s a horribly inefficient killer. (Last time, I was the one who inadvertently finished off his mouse.) I promptly shut the bedroom door behind me; previous experience with apartment bats suggested to me that any reduction in the bat’s available airspace was a good thing. Then I grabbed an empty wastebasket. Iz had re-cornered the bat under the dining room table. It was about eight inches, wing to wing, and the wastebasket dropped easily over it. Now I’d reached the ultimate reduction in airspace, and I’d also saved it from Iz. I’d far rather catch-and-release a live bat than dispose of its corpse.

Next I fetched my DeLorme Atlas of Massachusetts, and wiggled it under the wastebasket. There was some flopping inside the wastebasket, but eventually I had the bat on the atlas, then the wastebasket over the bat. (This is a macro application of the classic mug-and-cardboard trick for catching and releasing moths, another favorite cat toy.) I picked up the entire assembly, opened the window as wide as possible, held the wastebasket outside, and removed the atlas. I presume the bat then departed, since it wasn’t in the wastebasket when I brought it back in, nor did I see its body below the window in the morning.

I presume it had flown under one of our roof windows and found itself somewhat cornered; determining, incorrectly, that the “open space” was inside the window, it managed to get some of the screen up enough to wriggle inside. (The screens on the roof windows are cloth and attached to the window frame with velcro, so I can imagine a bat working some of the velcro up.)

I’m not sure about the extent of the bat’s cat-inflicted wounds. He definitely did some damage, but he didn’t kill it, and presumably it could still fly. I didn’t take the time to grab the camera, which he’ll probably resent later. (I didn’t get a good shot of his mouse, either.) The outstanding question, though, is rabies: could the bat have been rabid? It didn’t bite either of us, but Iz bit it.

I have to admit I’m a bit proud of him, though. After all, not only did he catch a mouse, he caught a mouse with wings.

Now playing: New State of Grace from Love and China by Nerissa & Katryna Nields