cats versus dogs
Maybe you or your family have owned some combination of dogs and cats? After about my sixth grade of school, our family had as many as — oh, 11, cats, and as many as 2 dogs. That’s two liters, 7 cats which were pretty shortly taken to inevitable slaughter but hopeful adoption, 1 cat given away, and then cat number 9 killed by a vet performing a neutering operation. They gave us peanut brittle to apologize for killing the cat.
One of the dogs was run over by a car, which left us with 2 cats and a dog — on through high school graduation. They initially had to be separated — dog reacts furiously to petrified cats. It is a curious lesson in their path to detente. I suppose a licensed dog obedience trainer can give the low down on how this outcome is achieved, but we muddled through to its conclusion where they could live with each other. At first the cat reacts to the dog by running off to a corner. But the cat quickly learns that the way to get rid of the dog and have her brought back outside is to provoke it — straddle next to the dog (hair standing on end, tail up, a bit gingerly.)
Reaction on how to handle the dog’s barking frenzy and cat’s provocation becomes contradictory. You want to send the message to the dog that barking at the cat will have it put outside, and you want to send the message to the cat that provoking the dog will not lead the dog to be put outside. The thing ends, though, with the dog able to keep its control, not provoked by the cat, and the cat giving up on its attempts to get the dog to respond. And it ends even further years later with the dog and cat growing old and lethargic and lacking the energy to fight.
I don’t know. I thought about the cat and dog in concern with Pastor Terry Jones burning a Koran, resulting in a deadly protest in Afghanistan. I suppose the latest protest is better in keeping — though the message of the sign misses the mark of the proper reaction of miffed eye roll. (I suppose they’re apt to draw a conclusion between Jones and this, where Jones is just an annoying guy to us.) “If only religion were the opiate of the people. Instead, religion is the goddamned PCP + crystal meth + ‘roid rage of the people.”