Four Against Chickadees

Fighting boredom is one of the biggest challenges when camping in the living room. TV and video games are nice, and the internet is indispensable, of course. But for sheer entertainment value, you really can't beat cats. I love dogs, too, but I think that for my current predicament, cats are a better fit, since they don't require as much attention or mobility on my part.

If you don't have cats, you may have never experienced the cat "chatter." It's pretty wacky the first time you hear it, because it's not a sound you typically expect. They do this chatter when they see some prey, usually a bird, that they can't get to. Here's a pretty good example of it:




Well, we have four cats. They like to sit on the back of the (tasteful!) couch next to the window and watch the world go by. And when there are birds, they chatter. All four of them can get going at once. They crouch in rapt attention, totally focused on some little bird on a wire outside, their mouths chattering, whiskers twitching and the tips of their tales thrashing. The frequency and intensity of the chatter goes up depending on the number of birds flitting around.

So it's pretty much a geiger counter that detects birds instead of ionizing radiation.

We also get squirrels coming by to get the birdseed we leave out. They run back and forth on the window sill right by the couch. The cats don't chatter at the squirrels. They just freak right out. They have no idea what to do with these brazen little invaders, only millimeters away, on the other side of glass...sometimes only on the other side of a thin wire mesh!


The daily drama of cats vs. birds vs. squirrels definitely keeps me occupied. Now if I could just keep them from jumping on my hip out of nowhere.