The SO mentioned a while ago, in the context of a conversation that arose during a documentary, that she’d always wanted a statue of the RCA dog. Yesterday was her birthday, and she was pleased to get a life-size Nipper, The RCA Dog statue. The cat… was suspicious. He freaked out a little.
He was all like, ‘It’s a dog!’ He assumed a stalking/fight-or-flee posture and slowly advanced on the ceramic canine. The SO had put the statue on the hearth, initially, so Tonka had to stand up when he eventually worked up the nerve to smell its shoulder. Poor thing! We assured him he’s not being replaced. The SO put Nipper in the corner by the bookshelf. Tonka decided the doggie wasn’t a thread and ignored him the rest of the evening. (Incidentally, he loves watching out the window as people walk their dogs. Quite a lot of them on this street.)
Perhaps I should get the SO a gramophone for Christmas…
A friend of mine has seven cats in his home (it doesn’t smell as bad as you might expect…). One day he and his wife brought home a ceramic statue of a curled-up sleeping cat and set it in the middle of the room. The real cats were really unsettled by it. Not hostile, but very, very cautious about approaching it and inspecting it. Took them a while before they were convinced it wasn’t a real at.
Back when we lived in NYC, my partner once gave me a very life-like bird, carved out of wood and painted. I had some houseplants out on the balcony, and decided to put the bird out there too. One of the cats was standing at the window, nervously staring at the bird. We had window gates installed, so he couldn’t just go out and inspect it. Instead, he reached through the gate and was JUST able to touch the bird. Once he was convinced it wasn’t real, he lost interest.
There’s a life-sized bronze cat statue gracing the final resting place of dearly departed Dotty cat. Nearly scared the curl out of the new poodle pup. She ignores it now but the swimming pool is a different story…don’t know what she sees in there.
My daughter acquired a ceramic leopard statue, about half again as large as a domestic cat. Ours approached it very warily until they were able to give it a quick smack, then sniffed, determined it wasn’t real and ignored it forever after.
Apparently, after I went to bed last night, Tonka arched his back and put his stub of a tail straight up in the air, and did that sideways walking thing cats do. He didn’t get closer to Nipper than about four or five feet. He rolled over on his side and got his ‘crazy eyes’ and he vampire-like fangs were sticking out, then he started doing his head-roll thing. ‘Play with me! Play with me!’ Sadly, the SO didn’t think to use the video camera on her mobile. She said it would have been too dark to see anyway.
I told her she should move the dog around randomly when the cat is out of the room… which he is now, as it happens!
Cats are so funny/weird. I moved a small table into my kitchen, and for some reason Trouble the deaf cat just couldn’t deal with it. For four days he stalked it in slow motion. It took him 20 minutes just to walk across the room. I haven’t tried an animal statue, though…that sounds fun!
