Suicide Pigeon

I was going to get to work, really I was.

But then this pigeon did a not quite landing on the window sill outside, giving the sunbathing furries on my side of the low-emission glass a fright. It wasn't a full-speed smack into the window (actually Pipsqueak literally jumping up and then having some difficulty in putting her bulk on her 4 feet on the sill again made way more noise), but I kept an eye on the birdie anyway. It hopped around on the flat roof of the kitchen, looking quite chipper as it tried to nip at the bolts of the skylight. After a minute or two, I opened the window (squeezing myself into the opening to keep Gluttonus and Gluttona inside) and made shooing noises and waved my hand at it. The pigeon simply glanced up with its red-brown eyes, somewhat appraising as if saying "Oh, I'll give 3.2 for technique and 4.5 for execution". Perhaps it was tired of a long flight, so I closed the window again and figured I let the pigeon work it out on its own for a while. Both Steerpike and Pipsqueak were drooling away and whipping their tail in frustration on my side of the glass, so there was no real danger.

Half an hour later, Pipsqueak starts patting the window. Now, she sometimes has difficulty in understanding why it is OK to scratch trees and not OK to scratch the PVC window frame, so I turn around and open my mouth to give her a stern shout, and then just had to close it again. The pigeon had flown back up to the sill and was now engaged with Pipsqueak in some form of Miss Mary Mack. Unfazable, fearless, or just plain stupid? I tried to shoo it away, again, even trying to push it from the sill (hoping it would fly off and leave me to my writing damnit) and it just peeped at me like: "No touching the merchandise, yo. What sort of game you playing at, anyway?"

That's when I decided it was time to get the hubby to restrain the gluttons while I got the dumb kamikaze bird and stuffed it in one of the cat transportation baskets. We brought it over to the pigeon fancier ten houses down. It wasn't one of his birds though, he just glanced at its ring and said "Oh it's from Antwerp" so he was going to give it some rest and track down its owner through the Secret Registry of Pigeon. While we explained how we found it he was turning it over and checking its wings and feathers in quick and smooth professional movements, which makes you feel like there is some sort of magic to the whole pigeon racing thing. He also beamed an amazing amount of gratitude, which made me feel all funny and treacherous to the Cat God. It's not like I would be seriously angry with my cats if they munched up a racing pigeon. Maybe just somewhat annoyed that I'd have to get the bird's ring to the erm Guild of Pigeon Fanciers or something, because the pigeon racers are pretty serious here in Belgium and besides, the birdie is owned and as a long-time cat owner I know that any news is good news to an owner of free roaming animals.

I guess this suicide bird was making things simply too easy for the gluttons so I had to have mercy. On a bird no less. Stupid suicide pigeon. Now I'm going to wonder for the rest of the weekend why a pigeon from Antwerp was playing Miss Mary Mack with the cats. And if it will get back to its owner; I mean, do they have pigeon envy in this sport? And will it stay away, or will it visit again some day?