Cats of DOOM

[Drunk Monk]

How does a Buddhist handle such a situation?  I suppose just leave the squirrel to deal with its existence as it currently is...

Ah, a teaching moment <strokes beard thoughtfully>

Cats don't fare well in Buddhist iconography. There are at least two jataka tales with cats, and cats are villains. Jataka tales are like Aesops fables, incarnations of Buddha as talking animals that deliver morals. They are Indian and a significant part of the scripture. There's one about a cat killing roosters and one rooster is the incarnation. The cat tries to seduce the rooster with flattery, telling him she will consent to be his wife. The rooster notes their differences in their number of legs and refuses. I've never quite understood that one. There's another where a hare abandons its den and a partridge squats in it. When the hare returns and tries to evict the partridge, they can only agree to get a neutral third party to mediate, a cat. The cats listens and then eats them both.

There's a Chinese tale of a painter that paints the animals attending Buddha's death. This is one origin story for the order of the zodiac (the rat is first because it rides on the ox, who has the endurance to beat the rest, but then the rat jumps ahead at the finish line). There is no cat but the painter's cat gets forlorn for being left out. So he adds the cat in the end. The cat is so happy to see it that it dies on the spot. The painting is considered blasphemous and the painter is slated to be executed. But he gets a reprieve at the last moment when the paintings mystically changes so the Buddha is embracing the cat.

These answer your question like a finger pointing to the moon.