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The Kitten, The Cheetah, and The Power Of Focus.
I was watching this little kitten in our front yard today. He was focused. Totally ignoring everything else around him. He was hunting.
A single bird was in the grass about ten feet in front of this cat. He’s only a couple of months old and still learning. He was crouched down low, inching slowly closer and closer to the bird every time the bird hopped or pecked at a bug. The kitten used the movement of the bird to mask his own movements. Pretty smart thing to do for a kitten.
He was getting closer and closer to the bird, almost within striking distance.
Then, five of six other birds landed. And the cat took off after one of the new arrivals that was closer than the one he was stalking. That little change was enough to let all the birds get away. The cat lost his focus and was distracted.
That reminded me of a nature show I saw on TV about a mother Cheetah in Africa somewhere. She was hunting a herd of gazelle.
If the cheetah took a few steps toward one gazelle, then a few steps toward another one, she wouldn’t have a chance to catch either of them and would quickly starve to death. But that’s the key, she wasn’t hunting the whole herd. She had picked out only one gazelle from the herd to focus on.
