Halls of the Dark Muse

I was in the front yard sitting on the lawn playing with my kitten when this bird comes up and lands on the driveway and starts hopping around and making this high pitched chirping sounds, and it is clearly intentionally trying to taunt the cat. So at first I thought that maybe it had a nest near by, though I don't know where, as I am pretty sure it was nowhere in my yard, plus the bird came from somewhere on the other side of the street. I figure it would be I would let Strega go chase the bird and have fun since I was pretty confidant that he wasn't going to catch it, being that I was certain the bird was perfectly aware the cat was that and intentionally trying to lure him into chasing it.

The kitten goes after the bird, and the bird flies off a ways but than another bird comes up, and the two of them start taunting the cat somewhere. And than I ended up having to chase the cat down the street because he ran under the neighbors truck chasing after the birds.

Personally I am of the opinion that either the birds are just adrenaline junkies, and they like to mock cats for kicks, or they had some sort of bobby trap set up somewhere that they were trying to lure my cat into. Because if they did have a nest somewhere around, I really don't think it was that close to where we were, so I think they were just hanging out, and thought "hey, let's go mess with that cat." Or the other birds goaded them into it as a dare.

I get my kitten back and go back to the front yard and try and keep him distracted from the birds, when the neighbors cat came over in the yard and saw us playing, and looked intrigued, but was a bit leery. So I start to walk towards the cat to say hi and see if it wants to play with us, when Strega sees the other cat and goes into complete attack mode. And he has been around my cats before and is fine with them. He drives them crazy because he wants to play all the time, and they are older cats and usually not interested in having a kitten jump all over them and swat at their tales, but he is friendly with them. But just some instinct, or something when he saw this other cat he knew it did not belong and so he arched his back all up and started making that moaning sound cats make when they are about to fight, and this other cat is a pretty good sized cat but my kitten ends up chasing it off back into its own yard, so than I had to nab him so he would not go running off in the neighbors yard.