Since we nearly had a reprise of the Window Kitty Incident earlier this evening, and it occurs to me that we could also use silly stories, I give to you the Infamous Window Kitty Incident.

Torin, my ancient tabby cat, is a window cat (or he was, until he turned out to be somewhat allergic to direct sunlight, because he is gigantic and also a wee, delicate flower with all sorts of interesting health issues…secondhand pets, I tell ya).  Given his druthers he would happily spend his entire day sleeping in a window in the sun.  A number of years ago, shortly before we found out about the sun issue, we lived in a place that had a big bay window that he loved to loaf in and spent most of his time there.

Now, the folks next door had a pair of cats, who looked rather unnervingly like my two boys, Torin and his big brother, Ajah, who was a big, black cat with gorgeous green eyes and the personality of an extremely melodramatic 13-year old girl.  Since neither Torin nor Ajah went outside, it pretty regularly gave me a heart attack to see one of them wander by.

One afternoon, the tabby decided to hop up on the low concrete wall under the bay window, which came up just high enough that he was able to stand on his hind legs and peer in.  Torin was, as usual, napping in the window, and woke up to see a cat that looked exactly like his mirror image staring at him, practically in his nose.  He panicked, bolted under the bed (timid does not come close to how nervous he was in his youth), and did not come out for several hours.

Later that night, my then-boyfriend and I were watching tv in the living room, when Torin hopped back up onto the window platform.  All of a sudden I hear him start growling.  I look up to see him fluffed up, ears flattened against his skull, tail lashing, and he is snarling and hissing and clearly Very Pissed Off.  I jumped up to grab him and get him away from whatever it was that had him actually freaking out, and nearly got bitten.  He was completely target locked on the window, where there was a tabby face looking at him, snarling and- 

Reader, I lost it.  I sat straight down on the floor, laughing my ass off, because my gigantic wimp of cat, who needed to be taught that any new toys were not going to kill him and had once run away in fear from a piece of kielbasa, was attempting to straight up murder his own reflection.  Mind you, this is a cat who normally passes the mirror test, but he was utterly convinced that the Window Kitty was the cat next door, and Window Kitty Needed Killin’.  Window Kitty needed killin’ so much that I eventually had to herd 17 pounds of snarling, angry cat it into the bedroom and lock him in for a while, and for the next few weeks, he was not allowed near the window at night at all because he was itching for a rematch.

I still have to keep an eye on him sometimes, because every now and then he gets a look in his eye that clearly says he’s still looking for Window Kitty and wants to settle the score once and for all…