The resident cat had a face to face with our betta. Beth saw it all. Mowgli climbed onto the counter where the betta’s bowl sits. Bettas, for the uninformed, are aka Japanese Fighting Fish. Males cannot share a bowl, and as I understand, males and females aren’t too good together either.
The cat has shown interest in the fish but never intruded before. Today, he stuck his nose right into the bowl. The fish reacted by leaping completely out of the water and slapping the cat on the face with his tail. The cat lurched back. He pondered a reinvestigation of the fish situation then chose to beat a retreat.
The fish is a leaper. When I feed him, I hold the pellets over the water so that he knows they are there and the fish leaps at my fingers. He moves about excitedly whenever I near him.
Mowgli and I had a mouse moment years ago. He had cornered a mouse in the house. I got a glass with which to capture the mouse. I held Mowgli with one hand and reach with the glass with the other. The mouse reacted by lunging at us, which caused me and the cat both to flinch back, and the mouse escaped.
A similar anecdote occurred with a previous cat. Huck was a fighting guy, and an outdoors cat. I saw that he had captured a chipmunk. I grasped the cat to get him to let the chipmunk go. Huck released the chipmunk. Before the critter escaped, it swatted the immobilized cat on the nose then ran away. Huck was pissed.
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