Death to Flying Things
Has there ever been a greater sports nickname than “Death to Flying Things”?
Thought not.
It refers to this guy:
Robert Vavasour Ferguson was an American baseball player of the 1860’s and 1870’s, when men were men and umpires wore top hats and sat on tall stools to call the games.
He didn’t only luck out in the middle name sweepstakes; his defensive prowess won him the splendiferous nickname “Death to Flying Things.” As in, fly balls.
Otherwise, he was apparently kind of a dick.
But this post isn’t actually about a human, much less a surly one, but rather Earth’s Nicest Cat, TJ.
Just got back around 11:30 PM from hanging with my pal Joe, whose work week ends Thursday. As we did last week we sat on his front porch and talked while he drank German beer, a long-favored pastime of ours.
And I noticed, soon after returning, that TJ had caught a moth.
Hooray for TJ! He was immensely pleased with himself. As well he should be. Aside from the fact I hate those little bastards (I think it was one of the wool-eating kind: need to get more cedar balls) , I don’t think I’ve ever seen him actually catch one before.
And he’s tried. Oh, he’s tried.
I don’t know about your experiences, but all the cats I’ve known have been fixated on catching anything that flies. At least inside the house. They go into their alternate state, the primal hunter state where most of their personality is suppressed and they focus totally on their instinctual drive to kill.
They also tend to lose, as a natural concomitant, whatever sense they may have. It causes them to fly around the house like crossbow bolts, and about as dangerous. They race and jump and knock stuff over and slam into things in their crazed urgency to get those bugs. Even TJ, who when he’s not in robot-killer mode is the sweetest person I know (as he must be; otherwise he would have murdered his incredibly aggravating sister Squeak long since.)
In fact it seems to go beyond mere predatory instinct taking control. They often show what seems a kind of moral indignation: how dare those things be able to do something that I, a cat, cannot? Intolerable! Death! Death to the heretics!
I’ve seen them get so outraged they just sit back and chitter up in sheer inarticulate fury at houseflies. And I mean inarticulate: it’s as if they’re so damn mad they can’t even form normal cat vocalizations.
You have to be pretty pissed if you can’t even say, “mao.”
So it’s a big thing for TJ actually to bring down an airborne insect. And thus,for tonight at least, he earns the soubriquet, “Death to Flying Things.”
Update: Utterly Irrelevant Addendum - Holy shit! Kinky Friedman got old, and now he looks just exactly like Richard Boone!
You know - the guy who played Paladin on “Have Gun - Will Travel,” the greatest TV Western series ever?