Cat extreme sports: Dog-baiting, part 1

Our first-grade reader featured four characters: Dick (a boy), Jane (a girl), Spot (a dog), and Puff (a cat), who was bright yellow. The cat must have piqued my interest, because I asked my mom if we could get a yellow cat named Puff. Now, elementary-school cornea-popping yellow isn't a hue that offers much camouflage value to a predator, so it's no surprise that bright yellow cats are rare outside of first-grade readers. Still, she found a kitten who was yellow enough for jazz.

One of the ways Puff found to entertain himself was to taunt a large, fierce German Shepherd who lived down the block. It wasn't hard to get the dog to chase him. He liked to let the dog get very close during the chase, so that he believed he might just catch that cat, this time. But he never did. Puff controlled the pace of the chase. He didn't want to get too far ahead, lest the dog give up; and Puff had something else in mind.

He always led the dog the same way, to the same tree. The dog always repeated the same pattern, never considering any alternative ways to catch that cat. Puff zoomed up the tree trunk, leaving the dog to jump and bark below. Meanwhile, Puff hopped out of the top of the tree to a rooftop, ran across to the other side of the house, and zoomed down another tree to the ground. Then, he crept around the house, crouched in the bushes, and watched the dog leaping madly at the first tree, barking and slobbering frantically.

As far as I could tell, there was no purpose in any of that except to make Puff's day a little more interesting.