House cat encounters deer

Our cat Paloosh is lazy.  And has gotten lazier.  So much so, that sometimes he has not gone outside to do his toilet stuff.  So now we have him on a routine.  Every morning and afternoon (if it is not pouring rain) we put him out the front door.  He makes his way around the side of the house, down the hill to the back of the house, then up onto the deck and in through the cat door.  Along the way there are several locations with loose dirt for him to take care of his business, and we assume he takes advantage of the opportunity.  We have been doing this for a couple of months now.

This morning was a little different.  We glanced out the window and saw a black tailed deer, a doe, grazing at the side of the house.  We love to see these elegant critters, especially when they are up close.  Then we noticed that something near the house had caught the deer's eye.  We stretched our necks to see what the doe was looking at, and lo and behold, it was Paloosh.  He was hiding in the grass, and the deer was blocking his path around the house.  I grabbed a camera and took a few quick photos.

Paloosh kept one eye on the deer and schlumped back up towards the front of the house.  The deer was only mildly interested in the cat and continued to graze on the grass along the path, which surprised me a little as deer's main predator is the mountain lion, a distant cousin of the house cat.  Paloosh slipped under the "deer proof" fence to the safety of the front yard, and then around the other side of the house to the cat door.   We asked him later what he thought of the encounter, but he did not say much.