I love our chipmunks, and I saw some cavorting in a Serviceberry bush yesterday evening as I was bird watching. I was so happy the cats were indoors, or in their small catio, and the birds were all safe in my yard.
Apparently the chipmunks were not safe, however, as this morning my husband saw Purrcy run through the living room with a chipmunk in his mouth. He yelled, “Where was the cat? He has a chipmunk!” as Purrcy ran upstairs past me and into my son’s room. My son’s room is not a neat and tidy place. There are many spots to hide, I realized, as I grabbed the cat with the small live mammal in his mouth, and he dropped it. The chippy disappeared under the desk as I hurriedly put the cat out on the porch, and joined Doug in my son’s room. His hands were on his hips and he was frowning, with no chippy in sight. It had to be there somewhere.
We discussed a trap. But I don’t have a chipmunk-sized live trap. I grabbed a couple of mixing bowls from the kitchen thinking we might capture him under one… and then, um, maybe slip a piece of cardboard under it, like capturing a house spider under a glass to free it outside…? Yeah, surely that would work. But the chippy was nowhere in sight.
So Doug let the cat back in the room to capture the chipmunk. Purrcy had it caught before I had time to think through how we might get the chippy out of his mouth without it escaping again. Put the mixing bowl over the cat? Purrcy zipped out of the room, chimpmunk hanging from his mouth, past us, downstairs, and crashed through the swinging catio door. We ran after him, closed the inner catio door, and then ran out our back door and around to the other side of the house to the catio with hopes of getting the cat to release the chippy. Even before I had the outer catio door unlatched Purrcy had eaten the chippy’s head off. We left him to devour the rest of the body.
I love our chipmunks. But this was definitely a survival of the fittest scenario. That chipmunk obliviously entered a small fenced area that was full of cat-predator smell. Of course it got eaten (after being traumatized by the cat and two humans). As Doug says, even a blind squirrel will eventually find a nut. Even a caged cat will eventually find some prey.
At least it wasn’t a bird loose in the house. This time, anyhow.
P.S. At the time of this writing, it’s 24 hours later and I still haven’t found any cat puke. That either means it’s not going to happen, or that Purrcy has already made his deposit in some dark and hidden location that I will only find when I step in it, barefoot, in the middle of the night.
[Photo Credit Openverse]
Michelle Eames 