This video of a guy dressing up as a larger edition of his girlfriend’s dog’s favorite toy (a Gumby figure) has been making the rounds. I saw it even before it was featured on John Oliver’s show last week.
In case you haven’t seen it, here it is. The dog goes NUTS over this, and you can see the canine wonder in his eyes when he first glimpses the Giant Chew Toy (at 7 seconds in):
Well, inevitably, someone else tried it. Once again, a guy dressed up as his girlfriend’s pet’s favorite toy. Only in this case, it was a cat. It didn’t go as well:
Basically, the cat freaks out, runs quickly away, and watches the Strange Guy from the safety of the doorway.
True story: my mom the cat lover was excited when we got an adult cat in the early days of our marriage. And in the tradition of Moms who are Cat Lovers, she got my wife a t-shirt with the photo we had sent her of the cat.
Yeah, it ended up in a bottom drawer ;).
So, a few years later, we were moving and emptying out drawers. The cat was wandering around, checking out the boxes. We come across the shirt. As the cat came around a corner, we held the shirt out to him, showing him the photo of himself.
The cat freaked. Puffy tail, crouched and hissing. We quickly balled up the shirt and tossed it aside, giggling the entire time.
Cats have far more caution than dogs. They are solitary ambush predators, with no pack protection. Well, except for lions, but those aren’t kitty cats.
So when their human roommate shows up doing something completely out of character, they are bound to have apprehensions about what’s going on.
I remember once I was washing dishes with my music on, a collection of dulcimer dance reel tunes. I had no idea my cat was in the kitchen with me.
The music was so happy and jumpy, that I just had to dance. So, I did, hopping and kicking away.
I heard a scrabbling of claws behind me, and my cat raced past me, fur puffed in terror. I stopped dancing, and looked down the hallway. My cat was in the dining room, crouched and cowering, looking at me with eyes that said, “What the hell was that about?! Are you going to stomp me?”
Since I don’t normally break out into wild pagan dance rhythms in the middle of washing dishes, the cat could only conclude that I had abruptly gone stark raving mad for no reason at all, and was dangerous.
He eventually calmed down when he saw that my upright seizure had passed. Which was a relief because insane humans sometimes forget to feed the cat.
Dogs and humans hooked up tens of thousands of years ago. As a result, there is little difference between what a male canine and what an immature male human (is there any other kind?) thinks is a really great idea. Cats, 4k ago, and they’ve kept their distance. Y’see, cats are feminine, and they think you look like an idiot, same as your wife. Stick with your dogs if you want approval.
“The greatest pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him, and he will not only not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.” - Samuel Butler
