A Game of Cat and Mouse

The white mouse turns a corner and slides on the cold tile of the kitchen floor. The grey-striped cat follows closely behind, its claws clattering as it chases the quick blur of white.

The mouse runs. It runs for its life, its survival. the mouse runs purely out of instinct. Does it know of its fate? Or is it running just because it knows it has to?

The cat runs, too, but not for its life, for it has dry kibble in a ceramic bowl under a window, with curtains that flutter in the wind on a warm May afternoon. The cat runs for instinct, just like its prey. It runs because it knows it’s supposed to. It doesn’t run for life, but to calm the raging river rising in its chest, to pop the inflating balloon of temptation before its head explodes from desire. 

Is the cat cruel for following its primal instinct? Could this have been prevented if, say, it was raised alongside the mouse? As brothers, even? Or would the cat always follow its need to hunt?

The mouse ran, but its little lungs, its little legs, proved no match for the cat’s. The mouse was doomed from the start. It’s unfair really, the physical disadvantage of the mouse. You’d think they would’ve evolved to put up a fight; maybe they are, but this mouse would never live to know.

Pinned, the mouse fought. The cat’s paws heavy on the mouse’s chest. The mouse heaved and pulled, trying to wiggle out from under the cat’s grasp. But as said before, the mouse stood no chance. It fought, it struggled, but it failed.

Red spilled over the white canvas of the mouse’s pure fur as the cat enclosed its mouth around the mouse’s small neck. The cat was young, its mouth fitting perfectly around the scruff of the mouse.

The cat wasn’t negligent, it wasn’t cruel, just playful, just naïve. It wasn’t weak, either, for giving into temptation; it simply did what it knew how to do. Does that make it evil? Or simply natural?