The Cat Under the House

The first time I noticed one of the cats sitting under a birdhouse, it wasn't doing anything. Just sitting there. Tucked halfway into the brush at the base of the post, head tilted up, eyes fixed on the box.

No crouching. No twitching tail. No movement at all. Just patience.

At first I didn't think much about it. The cat wasn't bothering anything. It wasn't climbing the post or stalking around the yard. It was simply sitting there looking up. After seeing it a few more times, though, I started paying closer attention.

We've got a couple of outdoor cats that showed up one day and never left. Every now and then I'll look out the window and see one sitting below a birdhouse, staring upward like it has all afternoon. They don't look aggressive. They look certain, like they know something might happen eventually and they're willing to wait for it.

That's when I realized the cat wasn't really looking at the birdhouse. It was looking at everything around it.

A fence rail becomes a ladder. A low branch becomes a bridge. Thick shrubs become cover. A birdhouse mounted a little too low becomes reachable.

Before long I found myself doing exactly the same thing.

Now when I hang a birdhouse, I don't just look at the house itself. I step back and look at the fence line, the trees, the shrubs, and anything else nearby. I'm not asking where the birdhouse looks best anymore. I'm asking how a patient cat might see it.

The funny thing is, the birds seem to know all of this already. They rarely fly straight to the entrance. Most land on a nearby branch, fence rail, or another post first. They look things over before committing. If something doesn't feel right, they're gone. If it does, they slip inside like they had the place picked out all along.

The cats still sit under the posts sometimes.

Just not as close as they used to.

Every time I see one looking up at a birdhouse, I'm reminded that I'm probably not the only one evaluating the location.