Droit du Chasseur & Other Things

Last Friday, lulled by the snow, I ran out of gas. And so, arguing with the gas company to little avail, it's been a rather miserable week of cooking hot-dogs on a hot plate, huddling by a heater, and boiling small pots of water for shivering bird baths.

I guess it was just after yesterday's bird bath, that I heard a hoarse meaow. Cat in distress! Having no directional hearing I had no idea where mew was coming from and so I walked about making puss-puss and meaow sounds. But I didn't hear anything more and figured either it had been something else, or if a cat, then maybe one just running by.

Most of the week the dogs have stayed close by inside, huddling under blankets or close to the electric heat. Outside, it has been a constant drip as the snow slowly melted. Today, now that the ground is merely soggy, the pups have resumed their usual sniffing circuits. It was time, as well, for me to scope the grounds to check on which plants survived the frost.

As I step outside, Fips is walking about with a freshly dead cat in his maw. He eyes me suspiciously and with a pre-resentful stare that is certain I am going to do an injustice. I am appalled, but there's nothing to do except let him guard and gloomily enjoy his treasure until he forgets about it... one hopes.


I feel bad now, that I wasn't up to looking longer, much less, crawling about in muddy places hunting for a cat that maybe didn't exist at all; This accounts for part of my dismay. But an equal if not greater part of my shock arose from the fact that Fips had no pity for the poor puss puss. For him it was just dead, delicious, meat.

How illogical we humans are, confused with useless sentimentalities! It was just dead meat presenting at least an allure of deliciousness. Was there any difference at all between me bringing home hunks of dead cow and Fips contributing to the domestic economy by bringing home dead carcass of cat? None whatsoever. And had I been starving instead of wallowing in well-fed contentment, I'd have been very grateful to Fips for finding us a dead puss puss for dinner.

Some might argue that Fips wasn't bringing anything to the communal table. Nonsense. He was clearly bringing the dead lump of fur into his house where, according to the ancient Droit du Chasseur, the First Bite goes to the hunter; just as the first bites of steak go to me the Purchaser.... (well, at least sometimes). The salient fact of both our kingdoms is that the First One leaves seconds for the Seconds.

Fips' worry was entirely justified. He knows I am stronger and therefore can steal the cat from him. He remembers that I have done precisely that on former occasions with similarly delicious morsels. And this is his reward for bringing chunky meat to table? The indignity and injustice is beyond dispute.

But there is something I know that Fips doesn't. I understand that the hunk-of-cat might be diseased and that what sniffs out as delicious can turn out to be deadly. A doggie's sense of smell is a wonder to behold. In innumerable circumstances it has alerted us to dangers and saved our lives, detecting things inexistent to us. But our sense of memory is equally wondrous, detecting unsmelled dangers from the odorless store of our collective experience. Here too, the dog and I stand in a kind of diametrically complimentary equipoise

Mind-sniffing the circumstances, I decided that freshly dead feline presented little chance of harm, particularly since Fips seemed more intent on possessing than chewing.

After sulking over the cat carcass all afternoon, Fips finally got hungry and left it rather dirty and scraggled in the yard. I allured the dogs with choice cuts in sauce from a can. As the dogs ate, I picked up the soggy, muddy clump of fur and flesh and buried it. Why?
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