Tramp,
Using the cat to lead into how you feel about presents was really cool. Another masterpiece in composition.
Your cat gives you dead birds? Our cat gives me live birds. I know what you mean about the "cat talk" when they are offering a present. It is not the usual, "Meow." Sounds like some kind of cat chatter. I hear it and here comes Cat-From-Hell with a bird or mouse in the house. (We have a cat door in the people door.) Cat-From-Hell drops the poor animal at my feet and it immediately runs or flies away--in the house--with Cat-From-Hell in hot pursuit.
I have learned to take the birds, so that they do not fly in the house, running into mirrors and windows, feathers flying with each collision. I turn them loose outside while Cat-From-Hell is looking around trying to figure out where it went.
The mice are a problem because I do not have the cat's finesse to pick them up without getting bit. I have to wait for Cat-From-Hell to catch them again and then put them both outside.
Cat-From-Hell cooling it in ice plant.
