The Life of Pye is about a cat – the cat who adopted me.

This is another post in the sporadic series about Pye’s antics. Some previous stories are Pye Has a Foot Fetish and Thirty Hours Without Pye.

Before I start, let me note that this post is not about my cat and a tiny ship that was tossed. This is about a different minnow.

Pye and The Minnow

At one of my jobs we sell live bait fish: minnows and goldfish. Until I saw a dog playing with a minnow, which the dog’s owner had placed in a parking lot puddle, it never occurred to me to get a minnow for my cat to play with.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Cats are above fish on the food chain. I never claimed to be brilliant.

Moving on…

After work one day I got her a little minnow and placed it in a shallow baking (pie) dish in the shower. Pye stared at the minnow for a long time. (Remember, this is the kitten that appeared on my doorstep half starved because she couldn’t figure out how to catch enough bugs to stay alive. She and I live in a country park – there is NO shortage of rodents and reptiles to eat, provided you’re bright enough to catch them…)

Pye has never seen a minnow and doesn’t know what to think.

By the way… The brown caulk in the top center of the photo is my poor attempt at caulking my shower. (Note to self, and any others wishing to caulk their own shower: Do not assume that just because the color on the tube of caulk says “Almond” – and looks JUST LIKE the color of your shower – that it will actually match said shower. It will not.)

Uhh, Pye, the fish is on the *inside* of the bowl, not the outside.

She chased the minnow around the dish over and over, looking at it as if it was the strangest thing she’d ever seen. Obviously, she did not recognize it as food.

Pye and The Minnow.

By the end, she was getting pretty wet but didn’t mind. (In case you’ve missed any previous mentions about Pye and water, Pye is a water-loving freak of cat nature.)

Pye finally catches The Minnow. (She flipped it out and I put it back in the the dish.)

Pye managed to get the minnow out of the dish about three times. She just stared at it as it flopped around on the floor. It seemed Pye didn’t recognize it as a food source (see above note about starving kitten), and wasn’t going to eat it anytime soon.

??? Gees, this cat is really lucky I decided to let here live with me.

Each time, after a few seconds of her staring at it, I put the minnow back in the water. After about twenty minutes of seeing the poor little minnow batted around the dish, I started to feel badly for it. It was then I decided to set it free into the lake.

 Disclaimer: No minnows were harmed in the making of this post. Mostly because my cat doesn’t recognize fresh, live fish as a food source.

Update: The minnow was probably eaten by a larger fish shortly after I placed it in the lake.