Conditioned Response

Puff, the cat I had when I was a young boy, was shot in the paw with a BB gun once. While the injury was healing, he hobbled around on three legs. My mother pampered him endlessly. She gave him extra treats, cuddled him, and cooed to him in baby talk.

A couple of weeks after he had healed, I was playing with him in my room one day. He was actively chasing string, slapping toys, and jumping around. Then my mother came into the room. Immediately, Puff raised his paw and and gazed up at her pathetically.

Happy Halloween from Rocky and Star

The Mouse That Roared

From Edna:

My brother had a white mouse that invented an alternative to endlessly turning the exercise wheel. This mouse would get it spinning fast, jump off, and grap onto the outside of the wheel. He rode it up to the top, where he would wedge himself under the glass ceiling with a squeek.

I don't know what he got out of it, but he did it often enough that my brother named him "Stupid." In retrospect, he seems like an adventurous pioneer mouse whose experiments just didn't pan out.

Music startles the domesticated breast

Evelyn, my erstwhile Shih Tzu, usually seemed uninterested in music. Whenever I played music she just lay there, apparently oblivious. One day while I was listening to a radio broadcast of a Japanese jazz percussionist improvising in a junkyard, she got up and started exploring the area behind the speakers, trying to find the source of the sound (mainly by using her sense of smell). I decided to try playing different styles of music for her to see how she would react.

I played samples of every style of music I had. From Gregorian chant to heavy metal she just lay there, apparently oblivious. When I started George Crumb's Black Angels for amplified string quartet, she didn't wait around to see what it was. She bolted at the first sound and ran to the farthest point from the stereo she could reach, which happened to be behind the downstairs toilet. I found her there, trembling. She was afraid to come out for several minutes.

To Kill a Mockingbird

Puff, a cat we had when I was a young boy and who has been mentioned here before, had a lot of problems with a certain mockingbird pair that nested in a tree near our house every year. Seeing the kitten as a potential threat to their young, the birds would swoop down and peck at him whenever they spied him outside. He was no match for this sort of aerial assault.

This must have been a source of some stress for the little kitty. The day came, however, when he was big enough to deal with the problem directly. No doubt the issue had been in the back of his feline mind for years, and at length a plan took shape. When the time was right, he executed.

I was playing outside when Puff made his move. One of the mockingbirds was flying toward the nest. It followed a predictable route; a route Puff had noted well. Its flight path took the bird to within several feet of another tree. This fateful day, Puff was waiting there. He leapt from the upper branches of the tree, a good 50 feet off the ground, and snatched the mockingbird out of the air in a splash of feathers.

Joined as one by Puff's claws, the two plummeted earthward and crashed into the yard. Within a couple of minutes, nothing remained of the bird but a scattering of feathers up and down the block.

Dogs can't tell it's not bacon


Sorry boys, it's not bacon, it's a camera.

What my dog taught me about fine dining

I used to have a Shih Tzu named Evelyn, after the Zappa song "Evelyn, A Modified Dog." Normally, she was not a finicky eater. She ate the same sort of dog food every day, vacuuming it up as if she were starving.

But at one point she decided she no longer liked the usual dog food. Day after day she refused to eat. Toward the end, she lay next to the full bowl, whimpering and lookup up mournfully. She was very weak and trembling slightly.

I didn't know what to do. The vet assured me that a dog will not go on a permanent hunger strike, as a cat might do. A dog will get hungry enough to eat, sooner or later. But it seems Evelyn had never studied veterinary medicine, and didn't realize that was the case.

One day I filled her bowl in the kitchen as usual, but slipped on a wet spot on my way to her feeding place. My feet went forward and my head went back. I landed painfully on my back. The dog food went everywhere.

When she heard the noise, Evelyn came running - not to check on her fallen master, but to gobble up the morsels of dog food from the kitchen floor. The very same food she found boring in her bowl was now exciting and delicious.

It was then I finally understood the importance of presentation to the enjoyment of a fine meal.

Cat extreme sports: Dog-baiting, part 2

Our dog, Rocky, is about a year younger than our cat, Star. Star has always been part of Rocky's "pack," and he comes to her defense without hesitation.

Star feels like she's part of the group, too. When we take Rocky for a walk, Star wants to tag along. She usually lags behind; being a cat, she's easily distracted, and takes side trips into people's yards to investigate things that catch her eye. After all, that leaf moving in the breeze might just be a mouse. You can't really be sure until you sneak up on it.

Her confidence in Rocky's protection is such that Star has invented a little game she likes to play with the dogs whose yards we pass. Lagging behind as usual, she waits for a dog to charge her in defense of its territory. In response, she lies down on the sidewalk and turns upside-down, as if she expects the dog to pet her.

The behavior seems incongruous. A large dog is bearing down on her, teeth bared and growling, and she lies down as if she's at home in someone else's favorite chair. Every time, Rocky appears in front of the other dog, growling and baring his teeth, just in time to save Star.

Papillon

Our Boxer, Rocky, is normally well-mannered and sweet. But one thing he just can't stand is to be away from home or separated from us. When we have to go out of town, he manages (with difficulty) when we can arrange for a pet sitter, but he can't tolerate being left at a kennel, no matter how pleasant the facility may be.

We learned this the hard way. We left him, along with our cat, at a very clean kennel, where the people are careful about diet, medicine, and exercise, and where a vet is always available. It looked like an ideal setting, so we left them there without concern.

On our return, the manager of the kennel came to us and asked us to join her and the vet in another room for a private conference. She wanted to tell us that Rocky would no longer be welcome at the facility. It turns out that he had spent the entire time trying to escape. He had broken a tooth trying to bite through the latch on his cage. He had been on a hunger strike, overturning his food bowl and pooping on it at every feeding. Every time they tried to exercise him, he did his best to get away. On occasion he broke free of the handler and ran through the facility in search of an exit.

We don't know of any other dog who has been formally banned from a kennel.

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.

Dog day afternoon

Anyone who was in marching band in high school knows the joys of pre-term summer band practice, and those who endured this rite in a Southern state will recall how much the August heat and humidity added to the fun. I went to high school in Georgia, at a school whose football team gave students and parents little reason to look forward to games. The responsibility fell to the band, then, to give school supporters something to cheer about at half time. That meant we practiced extra hard, and extra long.

Diversions were few and far between, and usually welcomed. But some diversions are a mixed blessing. So it was when two dogs joined us for marching band practice one day.

The incident may not have made such an impression on today's teenagers, but that was a gentler and more innocent era. The kids at that time were less jaded than today's youth, and would have gone into paroxysms of embarrassed giggling at the mere whisper of a word such as "nipple" or "buttock." It was into this cultural milieu that two male dogs entered, one sweltering August afternoon.

Two hundred forty of us were arranged in a circular formation, facing inward. The dogs strolled into the middle of the circle. This alone would have been sufficient distraction to relieve us of practice for a few precious minutes. But the dogs didn't just stand there. Oblivious to their audience, they began to engage in Unnatural Acts.

They took their time, and they took turns. They were very thorough. By the time they were finished, the rehearsal was in chaos. The band director had no chance of recovering the group and getting back to work. It was the end of the day's practice session.

Different kids dealt with the shock in their own ways. Many laughed and many blushed. A few wept. Some noisily cheered the dogs on. Some even prayed - at least I assume that's what they meant by "Oh my God, oh my God!" Others had to sit down right where they were, their knees shaking or their heads spinning. One walked in circles, staring at the ground and shaking her head slowly in disbelief, her lips forming the word, "No," over and over again. Some of the boys engaged in a philosophical analysis of the event, raising thought-provoking points such as, "Whoa! Did you see that?!?!" The band director's megaphone-shaded voice cut through the din from time to time, unheeded but adding color to the audio environment.

All in all, a memorable day for everyone except, probably, the dogs themselves, who most likely didn't dwell on it much.

The cat who fought thunderstorms

When I was a teenager, some of my friends liked to go fishing. One day they convinced me to join them, to show me how much fun it was. I managed to catch a small fish, but once I got it off the hook it slipped out of my hand and back into the water. Frankly, it seemed more like work than play.

Bored, I took a walk through the woods to pass the time while they fished. There I encountered a feral cat, maybe 10 or 12 months old. For whatever reason, she decided to follow me around. When my friends were ready to leave, she wanted to go with us. The driver didn't want the cat in his car, but I brought her home anyway. We discussed possible names for the cat. On the way she prowled the interior of the car and climbed all over its occupants. Repeatedly tossing her off his lap, the driver finally suggested I name her with a well-known colloquialism for excrement. I didn't agree the name suited her. Besides, I had some difficulty picturing myself calling her home for dinner. It might have given the neighbors a bad impression.

For lack of a better name, I just called her Kitty Cat. She turned out to be an unusual pet. She broke one of the most popular stereotypes about cats, that they only hang around for the food and they don't really care about people. This cat wouldn't touch cat food, or any cat-friendly table scraps, or anything cooked, or anything out of a can. We tried many times to feed her before we finally gave up. All she ever did was try and bury the food bowl, which didn't work so well on the kitchen floor. It was clear that she intended to try and pull the floor over the food bowl until she could no longer smell it, so we just picked it up. Kitty Cat only ate what she could catch. Her attachment to us had nothing to do with food.

She was a contributing member of the household, too. She was diligent about hunting down any insects that might find their way inside, and generous in bringing her leftovers home to share. She never seemed to understand why we didn't appreciate her gifts of half-lizards and bird heads, or why we discarded such perfectly good morsels after she had worked so hard to catch them for us. Fortunately, she never let that interfere with our generally positive personal relationship.

When the time came for her to reproduce, she scoped out a secret place to deliver her kittens. We didn't think that was a particularly good idea. We watched her closely, and when the time came we kept her inside the house. We prepared a clean cardboard box lined with newspaper for her to use. She protested, wanting to go to the place she had prepared, somewhere out in the neighborhood. In the end, though, there was nothing she could do to forestall the inevitable, and she settled into the box.

She wouldn't have survived had we let her go to her hiding place. The first kitten got stuck on the way out, and had to be pulled out by hand. We thought the kitten was stillborn, but the mother would not let us put it into a bag. She licked it for a couple of hours, and it began to stir. In the end, she delivered four healthy kittens.

When they were small, she was very protective of them. She answered any perceived threat immediately and fearlessly. One day, a thunderstorm was approaching the town, and she could hear its rumble from far away. She ran outside to confront the storm, looking up and around to try and find the rumbling beast. She was ready to take on anything, no matter its size or power.

Kitten number two had the fur coloration of one of the local toms, but the personality of her mother. She was always the first into the fray and the first to try new things.

We were keeping them in the bathroom at one stage, and they liked to climb my legs when I was seated there. For my own comfort, I put them into the bathtub. Three of the kittens cowered at the far end of the tub, staring at the drain at the other end and trembling. Number two stood in the center of the tub, looking first at her siblings, then at the drain, over and over, as if assessing the situation. Suddenly, she pounced on the drain and swiped it mercilessly with her claws. It was as if she wanted to demonstrate to the others her superior courage, quite intentionally.

When they were old enough to start on solid food, it was number two who was the first to figure out what to do. She stood on three legs, holding a front leg out horizontally to block anyone who might try to take her food. Her siblings didn't solve the mystery of solid food for a couple more days.

Five cats were four too many for us, so I don't know what became of the kittens. We gave them away when they were old enough to be separated from their mother. My guess is that number two gave some other family a few tales to tell.