Not In Kansas Anymore (NIKA)

The Great Orange Chicken

Cobalt is a bit of a bully. If Rhodium is sleeping on the rocking chair, or sitting in the windowsill, he'll often decide that that's just where he has to be, and kick her out. She sometimes fights back a little, but she usually gives in pretty quickly, considering he outweighs her by something like 50%.

But today he showed his true colors. Both cats have been trying to tell us how they're dying to get outside. They've been watching birds, deer, and bunnies out the windows, and they just know they could catch some if they could just get out there. So we took them out on leashes this afternoon, for the first time since we got to Bellevue. Rhodium immediately started exploring the area under the birdfeeder. (And we got to hear what the local birds' alarm calls sound like, as several sat up in the high branches and played sentry to let everyone else know she was there.) Cobalt was pretty dubious about even wandering on the deck, jumping and running a couple of times at nothing. Finally, he just crawled into my lap and hid. The wide world was too much for him, the big chicken. :-) He eventually explored the lawn a little when we set him on it, but he was very nervous the whole time. So much for the mighty hunter he's been pretending to be.