T'other Friday (13th) I was talking to a friend about rabbits as we rode horses through the bush, and I commented that, although there are rabbits around the place, there weren't any on our block. Wrong! There WAS at least one....
That Sunday night we were watching the end of a movie on TV when White Kitty (who does have a name: Spook, but always gets called "White Kitty"!!) headed towards the front door. As I'm not one to miss the opportunity of letting any animal out of the house, I jumped up and opened the door so she could run out. It would not have been more than a minute or two later when she reappeared at the front door, absolutely frantic to get in, and with "something" in her mouth - something BIG! I thought: little witch, she's taken the opportunity of catching some poor defenceless bird sleeping peacefully in a tree somewhere - but it didn't really look like a bird. Closer inspection revealed a RABBIT - a young one, about half grown. I said to Jerry "White Kitty's got a rabbit" - "No", he said, "it's a bird". But when he went closer he saw that it WAS indeed a rabbit!!!
I wasn't quite sure what to do. The rabbit appeared dead, but as I wasn't totally sure, I figured I'd better let her in to check. She was absolutely frantic to come in - running back and forth beside the glass window next to the door. I opened the door and she shot in like a bullet, round into the kitchen, up onto the freezer in a giant leap, and dumped the rabbit in the dish of cat biscuits - she knows where cats are meant to eat!!! The rabbit was definitely very dead - she had not killed it, but must have found it already dead.
Now as most people are aware, I have some dogs who are the result of a couple of hundred years of breeding to create efficient rabbit hunters. Needless to say there was pandemonium in the kitchen - six dogs were barking, standing on their hind legs and telling me in no uncertain manner that THERE IS A RABBIT UP THERE! (Yes, the 2 'honorary' whippets were also involved....) White Kitty was growling extremely loudly and virtually replying "well tough luck, you're NOT getting it, it's MINE!"
White Kitty and the rabbit obviously needed to go out again, as I didn't fancy her staying in with her "meal". But first I thought it would be logical to take the dogs for their nightly "wee" walk, because if kitty+rabbit went out first, dogs would end up with the rabbit when I let them out for their walk. By the time dogs and I got back from said walk, James advised me with great glee that White Kitty had completely devoured the head of her prey, absolutely nothing left of it at all - yuk...
With all dogs safely inside (once again telling me that THERE IS A RABBIT ON THE FREEZER...), I grabbed White Kitty and left Jerry to follow with the remains of the rabbit, and we threw both of them outside. I had a little peek later on and White Kitty was still exactly where she'd landed, working her way through the rabbit, and there wasn't much of it left at all. By next morning it was all gone, and White Kitty seemed to me to be very smug and pleased with herself.