from the series Origins (with Paul Evans)

from the series Origins (with Paul Evans), a photo by Karl Hurst . on Flickr.

This is the work of the photographer Karl Hurst of Sheffield, United Kingdom. Please follow the link to see more of his work.

A few years ago my then 11 year old cat Nikita snagged a bird from the rail of my balcony outside my bedroom. She was quite a bird killer back then, it had been her fourth kill that year. It was still early in the morning and I was hurrying to get ready for work. The cat batted the bird through my open sliding glass doors and had it inside my bedroom, toying with it, letting it fly and knocking it down again, with the usual predatory cat-like cruelty mixed with play impulse.
I was going to try to get the bird away from the cat but it occurred to me that the cat was just fulfilling it's nature as a cat. I love the cat. She is 15 years old now and I have an investment of time and shared companionship with the cat, whereas I had none with the bird. The bird was already irreparably damaged by this point. Nikita was having so much fun that I just left the bird with her and went about my morning ablutions. I made a mental note to clean up whatever carnage was left over from this game when I got home.
I returned several hours later. There was little evidence that a bird had ever been in my apartment. I couldn't find anything of the bird in my bedroom. The only evidence that a bird had been there was that there were four or five tail feathers downstairs in the living room. I thought that perhaps, against all odds, the bird had recovered enough to escape Nikita's fatal clutches. I threw the feathers out, thankful that there was not a more sanguine crime scene.
I got undressed to take a shower. As I was walking across the bedroom I felt something tiny squish underneath my bare foot. I bent down to investigate the cause of this unpleasantry. The only part of the bird that Nikita did not devour was a very tiny, perfectly formed miniature of what looked like a human heart. Nikita had worked around this organ with the finely honed skills of an experienced feline surgeon.