This is the horrific way I was woken up this morning:
The bedroom window faces the back yard and given the warm weather, was open all night. Bursting through my slumber was the low-pitched yowl of a cat outside. Soon following was a second cat snarl, this time louder and longer, sounding like an angry violent cat scream. In my mind’s eye I saw a cat form, crouched low, ears plastered back, teeth revealed, and I thought, “cat fight.” Simultaneously I felt a wave of peace and gratitude that Dodo is an indoor cat and doesn’t get involved in stuff like that. Within seconds of the cat scream, I heard Mr. W’s voice coming in from the window, saying, “Dodo!!”
Sleep was immediately a lost cause. I listened carefully, and heard the sliding door leading to the back yard close. I half-expected Mr. W to run upstairs into the bedroom in a panic, holding a bloody black-and-white cat, but instead, only heard “normal” morning sounds of dishes and utensils clinking in the kitchen below. I got up, went to the restroom, and crawled back under the sheets, staring into the foggy sky outside. I guess I was hoping Dodo would walk into the bedroom to greet me with his higher-pitched wails, like he does to wake me up and announce himself in the mornings. No Dodo.
Eventually, Mr. W came upstairs and walked in. I was still catatonically staring into space. “What are you doing?” he asked. I turned my glazed stare in his direction. “Dodo is now a battlecat,” he announced rather proudly. I gulped back the resentment I felt, as I had trained Dodo to be an indoor-only cat, but had only learned in the last week or so that unbeknownst to me, Mr. W had been letting Dodo out into the back yard unsupervised in the mornings. According to Mr. W, Dodo just walks around the brick path, sniffing flowers and chewing some lily leaves, sometimes taking tastes from puddles of water made by the early morning sprinklers, and when Dodo was ready to come back inside, he’d meow by the door and Mr. W would open it for him. (I’d seen Mr. W encourage Dodo to go outside before, but Dodo wouldn’t stay there for long, only venturing a few steps out and then running back in within minutes.) This morning, Dodo did his usual round but didn’t yowl at the door to be let back in. Instead, he went for a second round. Mr. W had come back inside, and then heard the fierce yowls that I had heard. When he went to investigate, he found Dodo squared off facing another cat, which Mr. W recognized as a smaller gray tabby belonging to the new people next door (“I guess their cat ISN’T an indoor cat like I’d thought,” he said). When he approached the two cats, the gray tabby turned and ran off onto the low wall. Dodo sprinted after it, which was when Mr. W called out “Dodo!!” and my cat, knowing it wasn’t allowed to go much farther, froze in place. Then Mr. W picked up Dodo and brought him inside, closing the door behind them.
“You shouldn’t leave him outside unsupervised,” I said after his story, frowning.
“I know, I won’t anymore. This is the first time I’ve seen another cat in our yard.”
“He probably smelled the other cat and was being territorial.” I didn’t like the idea that my 13-year-old indoor cat felt the need to defend his house from random younger cats, which cats I don’t even know were properly vaccinated against rabies.
Dodo came strutting in at this point and greeted me, jumping onto the bed as usual, albeit later this morning.
“And now that cat taught Dodo how to get on the wall.” Great, just great. “Dodo kept going back to the glass door and looking outside,” Mr. W said almost gleefully. “He’d take a drink of water, then turn back to the door and look around.” Mr. W imitated the suspicious alert looking-around movements he’d seen in Dodo earlier.
I leaned my face toward my cat, who touched the tip of his damp nose to mine. I rubbed his soft head, telling him, “I know you’re a tom, but you’re not young anymore. Don’t go out there trying to fight stupid little cats, okay?” Dodo didn’t make me any promises.