Kitty and the Crickets

Huckleberry Huckstable

One of the great pleasures of the waning summer days is listening to the resounding chorus of crickets outside, and yet it’s amazing how many of the musical critters make their way INSIDE to scitter about the house. Perhaps they’re attracted by the unusually loud soloists already in residence in the corners and crevices of our home, playing their tunes loudly enough to keep us awake at night. And yet their bold tunes make them enticing targets of Huckleberry, our sweetest, dearest of feline companions who morphs into lethal  exterminator at even the shyest chirp. “Huck” (for short) is horribly effective at scrampling the winless creatures and slowly, methodically amputating their hindquarters. One morning I collected SEVEN corpses, legs strewn mercilessly about the house. Occasionally I’ll find a cricket still clinging to dear life, pitifully scooting along with one dreary leg and eagerly climbing onto my hand for an escort to ANYWHERE else. But I can’t catch them PRIOR to their hour of need! No, they hop too quickly away, confident in their navigational abilities and proud of their warmer home. But as their songs expire one by one, I am left to collect the dry, lifeless bodies of the little instrumentalists. Efforts to extract any cricket-empathy from sweet kitty are hopeless, and any attempt to rescue the hapless critters are met with a torrid look of disdain. There is some comfort, if that is an accurate word, in the fact that as the season progresses I see their expired bodies outside as well, having found their mates and prepared progeny for the following season. And maybe it helps to view Huckleberry as the valiant mercenary on mission to bring an early end to the crickets’ fruitless search for food and warmth in later life.

No. It doesn’t.