Sometimes it takes a cat

This morning I was eating breakfast and was joined at the table by one of my cats, the one who should be named Total Destruction. He was on the far side of the table, looking out the kitchen window, not vulturing over my breakfast, so I let him stay. All of a sudden he sits up like a prairie dog, still looking out the window and continues to hold this position, all the while looking very interested in something.

I try to follow his line of sight, but don’t see anything other than a few fluttering leaves. A few seconds later I see two young deer running around the mountain at full speed, dashing here, there and all over in play. Both deer were small, probably last year’s fawns. They are out in a section of open ground that is part of an abandoned ski slope. I don’t know that anything prompted the antics, other than normal young animal hi-jinks. They were a good 50-75 yards from the cabin, when Total Destruction spied them. Sometimes it takes a cat to point out what’s going on around the neighborhood. I’ve seen lots of things because they saw them first and then I noticed their interest. Raccoons and possums are probably the most typical sightings that turn them on, but several times it was a fox and later her kits in a den near the cabin that provided entertainment for them and for me.