Below is the front window in our living room. Last summer the Fair Wendy put a pole In The Yard, and added a circular bird feeding pan, up high enough to be out of squirrel reach. Now we have a pair of doves, some cardinals and other birds coming and going, particularly as Spring is blooming full tilt.

We also have a cat, Kitty, who has caught some birds now and then , tho she seems to be entering middle age, and thud  lost a step or two, and hasn’t caught any for a year or so.

She still watches the birds intently through the window, often sitting on a nearby chair, chattering in the nervous way cats do when they’re consumed with feathered blood lust. But like the squirrels, she can’t reach them either.

So near, yet so far . . .

And a special feature of our living room is that we can watch the birds from three– well, sometimes four different angles.  The window itself is the “original.” And for about twenty minutes on sunny mornings, the second is a shadow silhouette of the feeder, and flitting birds. It slides down the blank opposite wall and then disappears into the couch.

The third perspective comes from this painting below, of a rushing brook in the woods. It’s in a glass-fronted frame, which is highly reflective in daytime, and perched on the couch. Long after the wall Silhouette birds are gone, one can watch the others’ banquet pretty clearly in the mirror-like glass, without turning around , , , , ,

That’s three: a visual feast, no AI image software needed.

This flock of shifty sparrows and such is driving our cat batty. She has attacked all of them, except the actual window, and is thoroughly befuddled by the silhouette — are birds hiding in the couch cushions??

Below is the painting when it’s cloudy or dark out, minus avian images.

On sunny early mornings, it seems to Kitty there are at first two sets of birds tantalizing and teasing her at once: one on the wall, in flickering silhouettes. The other is somehow in this mirror-like square.

So close! Surely she can grab one or the other, yes?

She has jumped at them, but somehow, no. The silhouette slides rapidly down the wall, and the birds in it, still flickering, hide somewhere in the seat cushion below. Kitty occasionally curls up there, to wait for them to return . . . .

Good thing she likes long naps, because it hasn’t worked so far.

In mid to late afternoon, the mirror image, as below, can look very realistic. (The couch pillows at bottom are a tell, tho.)

Yet sometimes Kitty wakes up to spot them in the fourth setting, visible when the shade on the big window is down. The Silhouette Birds mysteriously migrate from the depths of the couch & cluster up there, preening and pecking in faceless outlines behind the translucent slats, just to torment her . . . .

She’s leaped up to crash through the barrier, but that hasn’t worked either.

Often enough, she’ll head outside, to crouch in the high grass, hoping one will somehow land in reach.

 

Some might think it isn’t much of a life; but Kitty isn’t bored.

 

 

And when she’s not around, others with time to spare, like me, follow her example.

 I use only a camera in my stalking, and would let the bird go if I caught one, as we often have when Kitty has brought one into the house, usually still flapping and squirming, then dropped it.

She would be a complete flop as a left fielder for the Yankees.

But then, so would I.