Cat vs. Moth: Fight To The Death

The poor thing probably never saw it coming.

I watched as the moth walked across the carpet, it’s tiny wings fluttering softly as it searched for something I probably didn’t understand. When my cat came into the room, my eyes followed hers, and I knew the exact moment when she noticed the movement.

The cat’s eyes were moving about cautiously, summing up her new surroundings as she entered the bedroom. She looked this way, and then that, and then with a lightning quick movement her whole head snapped back to the first place she had gazed. The moth moved slowly across the carpet, no idea that it had been spotted.

The cat’s body tensed and seemed to grow longer than usual, her belly just slightly above the ground as she stalked quickly but silently towards the moth. Her ears were pushed back, her whiskers turned out, as her paws carried her right above the moth.

It was probably at this moment that the moth realized something was amiss.

Switching directions, the moth began to hurry through the forest of carpet, but the cat was too on top of things to let it escape. Following the tiny body with her eyes and face, she walked right behind it and put her nose down, sniffing it frantically.

I watched from my seat, observing my cat and her stealthy movements.

The moth switched directions again and tried to escape, but again the cat thwarted it, this time by smacking her paw down on the place where the moth was standing. I held my breath as the cat sat still, perhaps feeling the struggles of the moth underneath her tiny paw.

My cat was a huntress. This was her place in the food chain; above the moths, but perhaps below the chickens. My cat could never catch a chicken and I have told her this many times when she has begged for a taste of my food. Moths, however, are a completely different story, and my cat was obviously smirking to herself as she proved her dominance over this tiny species.

Looking closely, I could not see any sign of the moth underneath my cat’s tiny foot.

Slowly, my cat lifted her paw, her nose close to the ground, searching the space with her eyes for a glimpse of her prey. She must have spotted it, because her face drew back quickly as though she was frightened that it would use this opportunity to strike back some how. Lifting her paw all the way, she seemed to offer it its freedom and a chance to survive.

Frantically the moth scurried away from her, its tiny body swaying back and forth as it hurried through the carpet.

Too slow, my cat was thinking, and she pounced again, this time with both paws capturing its body between her feet and the floor. I knew that my cat was laughing internally at the moth’s pointless struggle. Lifting her paws once again she seemed to smirk at the small creature before lowering her open mouth.

My cat’s head pulled up quickly, and she shook her head. The tiny creature fell from her jaws onto the carpet again and my cat darted down after it, catching it in her mouth and swallowing it with one gulp. She sniffed the ground quickly and then licked her paw, combing her ear with the wet fur quickly in a short bath and then prancing away, content.

Rising up from my chair I walked over to the place in the carpet which had been home to a moth not long before. Bending down I searched for some sign of the creature; a tiny feather, a leg, anything. But there was none. My huntress had completely rid the world of one of its insects. I was both proud of her and disturbed at the same time. Such is the life of a cat’s “owner.”