Today, speaking of cats, a little cat Sandy has had for several years, named
Amy, was horsing around, sort of speak in my office.  She rarely comes up
into the living room because of our dogs always chasing her so she hangs out
in my office, or in our basement, and whenever I am praying with someone, or
listening to the radio or a talking book in a smaller room behind my main
office space, Amy is on my lap.  She is not a very frisky cat but is more of
a lap dog, or lap cat in this case, and she is afraid of almost everybody
except for Sandy and me and sometimes Gretchen.  Anyhow, today Amy was
jumping around.  Once in a blue moon, she'll get really happy and play
around but not often but today seemed to be one of those days.  When our
grand kids came home from school, they were outside my office playing but
Amy was making so much noise jumping around, I stopped typing, got down on
the floor near my guitar case in the corner where Amy was, and tried to
figure out what she was doing.  Gretchen has cats but she keeps them in her
apartment in our basement.  Often, however, Andrew comes up, one of
Gretchen's cats, and he and Amy don't get along.  He is twice her size, too.
Anyhow, I figured Amy was acting funny because the boys had run downstairs
after school and probably let Andrew out.  So, the boys come into my office
and are talking and one of them says, "Hey.  There's Andrew.  Get him so we
can take him and put him back in the basement."  As they are trying to catch
Andrew, he doesn't like being caught and put downstairs, Taylor said, "Hey.
Look Anthony.  What does he have.  He is chasing something."  I stopped what
I was doing and knew immediately what had been going on this afternoon in my
office.  Andrew had a mouse.  The boys tried catching him but Andrew tore
off down the steps into the basement to hide with his toy.  I called my 12
year old grandson, told him to find Andrew because Andrew often goes into my
grandson's bedroom.  I told him Andrew had a mouse.  All the boys went
running downstairs and a couple of minutes later, little Everett, came
upstairs with the dead, yes it was dead, mouse.  He took it out to the
trash.  There is an empty field next to my office and mice occasionally try
coming in this time of year to get warm or to find something to eat.  I
asked little Everett later if it looked like the mouse was dead or did he
look chewed up a little.  He said, "Yeh, grandpa, they had chewed him up
pretty good."  I've seen cats do that as a kid when I was growing up.
They'd catch a mouse and after it was dead, probably more from fright than
anything else, the cats would carry it around and play with it like it was
their own pet or something, haw.  We had an old cat who lived outside and
she had a bunch of kittens all the time.  One day my dad looked outside and
saw our cat with a mouse in the backyard.  She had her kittens all around
her watching.  She would let the mouse go in front of them, allow it to run
a few feet, and then go and jump on it and bring it back.  She was teaching
her kittens to hunt.  And you thought there was no God.

Phil.