The Hummingbird

The sun is slowly setting on this beautiful summer afternoon.  Early fog whisked away in the mid-morning, revealing the reason why Pacific Northwesterners put up with ten months of rain each year.  The two-story house has blocked sun from reaching the front yard for the last few hours, and all of the cats on the street find spots on the east side of houses.  Ichi is no different.

Ichi's favorite spot is under the thick bushes in front of our house.  He sees the entire front yard from this spot, and with his entirely black coat, unless you know precisely where to look, he simply isn't there.  Another reason his favorite spot is under the thick bushes out front are the flowers above these particular few bushes.  Long stems reach upwards from the mass of bushes, blossoming a lively red flower irresistible to the human eye, and even more so to the tongue of a hummingbird.

I have witnessed the aftermath of Ichi's encounters with hummingbirds, and it never favors the birds.  One time when I pulled up to the house around dinner time, Ichi was crouching in the tall grass.  I wasn't sure what was going on until I got closer, and realized he wasn't about to pounce, he had already.  What was left when I got there were the intestines and a few feathers.

Last week I saw his first stalk of a hummingbird up close.

My parents, a guest, and I were eating dinner out front, and Ichi was laying on the front steps grooming.  We had all finished our dinners, and we were in the process of catching each other up on our lives while finishing our drinks.  All of the sudden, a hummingbird appears a foot to the side of my dad's head.  He saw the bird and glanced to the side as the bird hovered and diagonally flew to a safer distance.  It then must have caught the sent of the red flowers and meandered over towards them.

We had all forgotten about Ichi, but in the two seconds it took the hummingbird to fly from our table to the flowers, Ichi had quickly slinked into position.  From the steps, he lowered to an near-prone pose, following the hummingbird with his intense wide open eyes.  As soon as it moved towards the flowers, Ichi moved without a sound through the tall grass at a crouch.  The hummingbird was blissfully unaware of Ichi's presence, and decided to check out the lower hanging flowers to see what smelled so good down there... no wonder the lower flowers still had juice for the taking.

Ichi, perfectly still, crouched less than two feet from the hovering hummingbird, who was hovering a little ways out from the flower, still inspecting.  With the speed that the bird reacted to my dad's sideways glance, if it had any suspicion that a cat was within ten feet, it would bolt.  Ichi simply wasn't there.  The moment the hummingbird went for the flower, blinding itself to the hunter below, his fate would be sealed.  Unfortunately for Ichi, I put a stop to the game by running up to both the hummingbird and my cat, scaring away the bird and leaving Ichi wondering why on Earth I wanted to pet him at that precise moment.