Last week I was driving home from the gym approaching a stop sign when a striped orange cat crossed the road in front of my car. Inside the cat’s mouth dangled a plump dead mouse, it’s tiny tail pointed down.
The cat reminded me of my parents cat, Orange-y, who was born to a stray cat named Mama on their porch. Mama would be spayed but not before she gave birth to mini-Mama, her look-a-like, and Socks, who Toes resembled and who she was named after.
Seeing the orange cat with the mouse reminded me of a similar experience I had in London last summer when I spotted a black cat like Toes capturing a mouse on the city streets. I snapped a blurry picture, which you’ll find below.
Seeing the stray cat in London made me think about Toes’s life before we rescued her. She must have hunted. How successful she was at it I don’t know. Although I will say when we dangled a play mouse on a string in front of her, she pounced with a fierceness that frightened me. And she loved eating. Wet or dry food–it didn’t matter–her jaws would chomp together mashing her vittles with a wet gravelly breath followed by a shallow swallow, consuming the food as fast as she could.
Her vet told us that at some point her chronic kidney disease might decrease her appetite, indicating she was nearing her end. As far as I know, that never happened. Toes stayed hungry.
Sarah Zureick-Brown 
I love this picture of the cat with the mouse! A beautifiul depiction of a base necessity– that we all must eat to stay alive-and it is usually at the expense of another living being.