Wild cat

We rescued our kitten from the Humane Society when he was six months old and tried to make him a housecat.  But this boy was born to be wild.  He was restless and not content in the house.  He could never get rid of his excess energy and was always trying to dart out the door.  An old saying came to my mind:  If you love something, set it free.  If comes back to you, it's yours.  If it doesn't, it never was.

So I bought little Jason a collar and a tag and set him free.  Well, not totally free at first. We would take him out in the fenced yard for "supervised visits".  He proved himself trustworthy, and it made me happy to see him run full speed across the yard, climb the tree, chase butterflies, and chew grass. He was completely content.  When he came inside, he was full of affection and had a much calmer personality.

Eventually, I started leaving the window open and letting him come and go as he pleases.  He always comes back.  Then he started joining me on my morning walks.  He trots along next to me like a little dog. 

He climbs trees with Noah:

He likes to go fishing with us:

This morning, Jason came flying in through the window, meowing like crazy and so covered in branches and burrs that I barely even recognized him.  The kids and I spent a long time cleaning him up and combing burrs out of his fur. In retrospect, he looked hilarious (like a walking, meowing bush), but I didn't take time to get my camera, because he was in distress. 

Remember my earlier post about flying creatures in the house?  Today I realized how the bird got into the house in the first place. It was lucky it lived.  Today, Jason appeared in the window with a dead sparrow in his mouth.  He jumped into the house and flung the carcass down the stairs. He stalked its lifeless body as it bounced down the stairs, and then he pounced on it, flung it up in the air, and stalked it again.  He caught it between his front paws:

Then he tossed it up and caught it in his back paws:

Finally when blood and feathers started flying, I removed the poor thing.