# Cat saves small boy from dog **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 14, 2014, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-saves-small-boy-from-dog/688469 "2014-05-14T21:28:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2014, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-saves-small-boy-from-dog/688469/61 "2014-05-15T17:10:24Z")
> [@starwarsfreek42](#): > > Uh, yeah, it is. They are hunters. Ever seen a dog chase a cat or a squirrel? They are hunters. That we should expect them to somehow magically understand that small humans are off-limits is ridiculous, we wouldn’t expect that from any other kind of animal. A dog isn’t any other kind of animal. It’s not a wild animal. Dogs have been selectively bred over tens of thousands of generations not only to know that humans are off-limits but to know much more sophisticated things than that. Dogs are able to achieve a certain level of understanding of human language. They understand human emotions. They can read human facial expressions. They can even pick up nonverbal cues from humans that are too subtle for other humans. Dogs understand point-of-view. They understand human gestures. That can follow the human gaze. (Dogs can understand that you are looking at something and know to look at what you’re looking at. They understand what pointing means. They understand when something they can see is blocked from sight from your point of view.) These are characteristics that surpass even other primates’ abilities to relate to humans. A dog is not a wild predator. > [@](#): > > And I can agree with that point of view too, but in the hands of a responsible owner this incident would never have occurred. Again, the owners are 100% to blame here for not keeping their dog contained, especially when they knew that it had a problem. No dog owner, not even a “responsible” one, can guarantee that a dog will never ever get loose. ---
**Author:** ![rocking\_chair](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rocking_chair/32/2918_2.png) [@rocking\_chair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rocking_chair)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2014, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-saves-small-boy-from-dog/688469/62 "2014-05-15T17:16:36Z")
tara also saved the mother from the dog. mom was not that far behind the cat and would have been hurt by the dog as well (as she was later) if tara hadn’t run him off. that family was adopted by a very remarkable cat. (the story goes the cat followed the parents home from a park) it is a shame that the dog is so young (8 months), however after seeing the behaivour in the video there is no doubt that the dog must be put down. ---
**Author:** ![Sarabellum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarabellum/32/3492_2.png) [@Sarabellum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarabellum)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2014, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-saves-small-boy-from-dog/688469/63 "2014-05-15T17:34:57Z")
Yup, that dog needs to be destroyed. Sad, but those are the facts. True, maybe he could be rehabilitated, but there’s so many (non-vicious-child-biting) dogs with good dispositions on death row. Rehab one of them instead. If the dog is so bothered by a small child on a bicycle, not teasing him or instigating, that his reaction is to kill the small human (and let’s not kid ourselves, without the cat’s involvement that little boy would have likely been killed) then I think the dog has a mental illness and is not a “normal” dog. How horrible the dog owning family must feel right now. To be the irresponsible villains and have their mistake splashed across headlines worldwide, plus having their pet euthanized. ---
**Author:** ![Why\_Child](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b782af/32.png) [@Why\_Child](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Why_Child)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2014, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-saves-small-boy-from-dog/688469/64 "2014-05-15T19:35:15Z")
First, GO TARA!! What a good kitty! What I want to know is why they have to wait to see if the dog has rabies before they put it down? My aunt was bitten by a stray cat that she had been feeding for several months on her back porch. She bent over to put down the food bowl, and the cat just rushed up and bit her, for no apparent reason. She screamed, which alerted my uncle to the problem. She went into the house to wash her wounds, and he got a gun and killed it. (This was not a residential area, the gun was kept handy because a bear had been raiding the birdfeeders.) My aunt remembered that I had spent 3 days in the hospital and almost had to have my hand amputated from a cat bite, so she went to the doctor. The doctor learned that they had killed the cat, and asked that they take its head (somewhere…?) to have the brain tested for rabies. Once my uncle informed him that bringing in the head was not possible, (remember, the gun was for a bear…) she had to undergo rabies shots. So why the wait? ---
**Author:** ![lieu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2014, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-saves-small-boy-from-dog/688469/65 "2014-05-15T19:37:36Z")
There’s no test for a living animal for rabies and from what I understand you have to wait until the animal starts to display some symptoms, then you kill and test it. Rabies shots are painful. In any event you don’t want to give a kid any kind of medicine if you don’t have to so they’ll observe the dog for a sufficient period of time to make the determination, then euthanize it. ---
**Author:** ![lieu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2014, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-saves-small-boy-from-dog/688469/66 "2014-05-15T19:48:54Z")
Make that they’ll observe for symptoms, then euthanize and test. Hopefully he was just agressive, not sick. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2014, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-saves-small-boy-from-dog/688469/67 "2014-05-15T19:52:27Z")
I had a cat who would have behaved like Tara. My cat was extremely protective and she HATED dogs. HATED. She was actually a menace around dogs. So yeah, if she were outside and saw a dog she would have attacked. If she were outside and saw a dog attacking someone, she would have attacked and chased. Needless to say, she did not get to go outside and have a reign of terror. ---
**Author:** ![Long\_Time\_First\_Time](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ad7895/32.png) [@Long\_Time\_First\_Time](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Long_Time_First_Time)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2014, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-saves-small-boy-from-dog/688469/68 "2014-05-15T20:32:03Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Nope. **dropzone** is spot on: > > This point was made by Neil deGrasse Tyson in the rebooted Cosmos series earlier this year. “Domestication,” is in large part a genetic concept. Dogs are different from wolves, and the difference is the result of evolution: specifically, selective breeding. Dogs that attacked humans were killed, and didn’t pass on their genes. Wolf cubs can be socialized with humans if taken at an early age, but they are never as reliably safe as dogs. > > it’s not clear whether the earliest wolf-dogs self-selected for their willingness to get close to humans and reap the obvious advantages of more regular food supply, or whether our 30,000 year old ancestors sought them out, but the end result is the same. Using the strict definition of domesticated animal, it’s cats that are still wild. For starters, over 95% of cat breeding is not controlled by humans. Since they all do the same thing (which is whatever they want) there aren’t a lot of traits to select for. They are essentially wild animals who enjoying hanging with people. FWIW, I once had a dog that bit a kid on a bike. He was a Rhodesian Ridgeback. He wasn’t the most stable of animals, and he had lots of extenuating circumstances - that I had gotten as a rescue, was traumatized as a puppy yada yada yada. He was OK with people of foot, but always went nuts when he saw bikers. No problem if he’s on a leash, right? Wrong. One day a kid on a bike got lost, and drove up my driveway. He was going to ask me for directions, and got within the leash range of the dog. Before I could react the dog ran up and bit the kid on the calf. (It was as if he thought “I always hated those half-human, half-wheeled beasts and FINALLY one has gotten in my sites.”). It wasn’t a hard bite, but it did break the skin. So - even a responsible pet owner can’t always be sure every child their animal runs across is going to be smart enough to avoid getting hurt. Having a dog like that in the house is like having a loaded gun in the house. Responsible gun owners keep them locked away, yet somehow lots of kids and family members are killed in houses that have guns owned by responsible gun owners. Just because it’s not the dog’s “fault” doesn’t make him less dangerous. I put the dog down the next day. Life is too short to keep a dog that bites people. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2014, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-saves-small-boy-from-dog/688469/69 "2014-05-15T20:44:55Z")
> [@Long\_Time\_First\_Time](#): > > Using the strict definition of domesticated animal, it’s cats that are still wild. For starters, over 95% of cat breeding is not controlled by humans. Since they all do the same thing (which is whatever they want) there aren’t a lot of traits to select for. They are essentially wild animals who enjoying hanging with people. People certainly control a certain amount of cat breeding - that’s why there exists specific varieties of cats, like Persians and Siamese. Admittedly the variation is not as extreme as with dogs, but it is there. It isn’t the breeding that people control with cats - it is the survival to breed. Cats are selected to not be (excessively) violent to people. Those that attack people unprovoked have historically tended not to survive, so there is selection pressue for meekness. The behaviour of domestic cats is remarkably different from that of wild cat species, which make for bad (that is, dangerous) pets - even when hand-reared from kittens, they may prove uncontrollably violent (at least, to those who did not rear them). They fight like, well, wildcats. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Why\_Child](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b782af/32.png) [@Why\_Child](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Why_Child)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2014, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-saves-small-boy-from-dog/688469/70 "2014-05-15T20:46:30Z")
> [@lieu](#): > > There’s no test for a living animal for rabies and from what I understand you have to wait until the animal starts to display some symptoms, then you kill and test it. Rabies shots are painful. In any event you don’t want to give a kid any kind of medicine if you don’t have to so they’ll observe the dog for a sufficient period of time to make the determination, then euthanize it. On the chance you may have misunderstood me a bit, I’d like to clarify that I did not mean to simply kill the dog, give the child the series of shots, and just be done with it. For myself, I don’t want to take an aspirin unless I have been suffering for a couple hours trying to wait it out, and cannot force it to go away by sheer willpower. (😃 And sometimes the application of alcohol, but that’s self-inflicted. :o ) I didn’t know you couldn’t test until the animal was showing symptoms. Thank you. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![carnut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnut/32/3531_2.png) [@carnut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnut)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2014, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-saves-small-boy-from-dog/688469/71 "2014-05-15T20:54:25Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > I never thought a cat would react that way. Female cats tend to be alphas and will protect their family. She’s a very valiant moggie. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2014, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-saves-small-boy-from-dog/688469/72 "2014-05-15T20:58:13Z")
I’m surprised we still don’t have an easy cure for rabies. I mean we use snake venom to make vaccines and some of those will solidify your blood, but what’s with rabies that makes it so hard to treat? ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2014, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-saves-small-boy-from-dog/688469/73 "2014-05-15T21:17:14Z")
Because rabies infects your nerve cells and basically heads straight for your central nervous system, which means spine and brain. Good luck at getting it out of those cells without killing the person. BTW, post-bite treatment (which is pretty much rabies vaccine to piss off your immune system at the virus, so it can kill off viruses before they infect too many more nerve cells, plus a big injection of antibodies to help out) generally should start within 10 days, and even washing the wound thoroughly for several minutes right after being bitten can help reduce the chance of infection. ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2014, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-saves-small-boy-from-dog/688469/74 "2014-05-15T21:36:45Z")
Not all viruses are made equal, and rabies is one of the most hearty, and is also insidious in its appearance of infection… makes it very hard to prevent and cure. ---
**Author:** ![saje](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saje/32/3631_2.png) [@saje](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saje)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2014, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-saves-small-boy-from-dog/688469/75 "2014-05-15T21:50:34Z")
I’ve had the rabies series, and while it’s not fun it wasn’t really all that awful. The immunoglobulin booster they start off with (kicks your immune system into high gear, as I understand it) is the worst. It’s something like 20 cc’s of an exceedingly viscous liquid - kinda like cold maple syrup - spread out into several injections in various parts of one’s anatomy. That was because of a rabid barn cat, and he wasn’t in the least vicious. In fact, he was generally shy and I got my hands on him because he didn’t run when he saw me, and he looked… off. Not foaming at the mouth, just looked not right. I thought he’d maybe been rolled by a car. Alas, no ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2014, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-saves-small-boy-from-dog/688469/76 "2014-05-15T21:54:20Z")
> [@Long\_Time\_First\_Time](#): > > Having a dog like that in the house is like having a loaded gun in the house. It’s worse. Guns don’t actively scheme to get out of the house. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2014, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-saves-small-boy-from-dog/688469/77 "2014-05-15T22:25:29Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > It isn’t the breeding that people control with cats - it is the survival to breed. Cats are selected to not be (excessively) violent to people. Those that attack people unprovoked have historically tended not to survive, so there is selection pressue for meekness. This is almost certainly the case. Tolerance of human activity must have gone hand in hand with the adaptation to feeding on the rodents human habitation attracted. > [@](#): > > The behaviour of domestic cats is remarkably different from that of wild cat species, which make for bad (that is, dangerous) pets - even when hand-reared from kittens, they may prove uncontrollably violent (at least, to those who did not rear them). They fight like, well, wildcats. 😃 However, while this is probably true to some degree, it appears that the modern wild population of wildcats that appears to have given rise to the domestic cat are far more tolerant of taming than more northern populations. Apparently a Scottish wildcat will usually not tame at all as you suggest. But African wildcats purportedly often will if raised from young kittens. Which raises a chicken and egg question. Did African/Near Eastern wildcats give rise to the modern domestic cat ( as indeed it appears they did ) because they were already more tameable than their northern cousins? Or have those modern African/Near Eastern populations become more tameable after thousands of years of ooccasional crossing with domestic cats? Given how nasty those more northern populations of wildcats still are after generations of interbreeding with housecats I’d assume the former, but it is awful hard to say. ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2014, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-saves-small-boy-from-dog/688469/78 "2014-05-15T22:50:32Z")
I remember reading **The Incredible Journey** , by Sheila Burnford, and this incident reminds me of the chapter in which the cat, Tao, attacks a bear to save Bodger, a friend of hers who’s a dog. ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2014, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-saves-small-boy-from-dog/688469/79 "2014-05-15T22:54:12Z")
[Here’s](http://media.irishcentral.com/images/MI+Tara+cat.jpg) a closer-up picture of the cat. I must say he looks rather…proud of himself. ---
**Author:** ![Trancephalic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trancephalic/32/380_2.png) [@Trancephalic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trancephalic)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2014, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-saves-small-boy-from-dog/688469/80 "2014-05-15T23:12:12Z")
> [@Dendarii\_Dame](#): > > I remember reading **The Incredible Journey** , by Sheila Burnford, and this incident reminds me of the chapter in which the cat, Tao, attacks a bear to save Bodger, a friend of hers who’s a dog. I was reminded of _[Cat’s Eye](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088889/)_, wherein a cat defends Drew Barrymore from a murderous troll no thanks to her superstitious parents. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-saves-small-boy-from-dog/688469.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-saves-small-boy-from-dog/688469.md?page=5)