Here is a story that almost turned out to be totally unfunny. When Oscar and Felix were kittens, they used to chase each other across my bedroom. Felix was a little smaller (and, yes, he was also cleaner and quieter and looked a little like Tony Randall) so he usually got chased (although Oscar was brotherly enough to be the chasee from time to time). So anyway, once I was half asleep, and dimly aware of the perennial chase. Then I heard some claws on wood, and looked into the open window sill, and saw Oscar looking very concerned, peering down.
Felix had fallen from the third to the first floor patio. I looked out the window in sheer horror, expecting to see poor little Felix badly hurt. Instead, I saw a cat that looked like Felix, only about twice as big. All his hair was standing on end. By the time I’d gotten down stairs, at least five seconds later, he was standing in front of the door patiently. He hid under a bed for two hours, but otherwise he was just fine.
Second funny story: My friend had a cat named Tut, who had trouble seeing patterns but had a very experimental nature. So, when someone left out a tray of cupcakes, Tut decided he had to try one. He didn’t like it. So he tried the next, and the next. Of the twelve freshly-baked cupcakes, at least half had a tiny little cat-bite right in the middle.
A friend of mine has a small cat, a runt. But the cat isn’t her pet, the cat is her dog’s pet. The dog gives the cat tongue baths; the cat cries for the dog when the dog is on the other side of a glass door. The cat is actually less attached to humans, hiding when most strangers come in the house. If the dog could talk, she would say, “Well, my cat’s very sweet, but she’s really scared of people”.
Oops, forgot to mention. A friend of mine, same friend who has the dog who has the cat, used to have a dog with a serious drinking problem. Apparently, this dog liked beer enough to pry the refrigerator door open, and bite the cans inside. This would create a lot of waste, if the cans inside contained, for example, Diet Pepsi. A bunch breached cans would lie on the kitchen floor with soda leaking out of them, and there would be a very dissatisfied (sober) dog.
If the dog were luckier (?), it would be able to find some beer, in which case it would drink itself into a very deep sleep. What do you think a dog hangover is like?
Our very first cat , Sam, used to organise some of the cats in the neighborhood to hunt squirrels, just like a small-scale pride of lions! Then, he would parcel out pieces to the other cats.
True story!
The other amazing Murphy story is that she has absolutely no killer instinct in her body.
When we have a mouse in our garage, we catch it and put it down before her to see what she will do. The mouse runs for an open field with an 80# dog’s nose attached to its back the entire run.
However, if our planet were ever invaded by tennis ball shaped aliens, and they invaded our yard, they would be toast with Murph, the chew o matic.
I remember the day that our 2 cats solved the riddle of the scurrying feet in the walls. I came home from work, opened the front door, and was greeted by the sight of a dead rat, had to be at least 12 inches stem to stern, displayed on the doormat. And next to the rat, 2 very proud felines. Not that interesting a story until I found that the rat had been killed in the basement. And brought upstairs for me. Just imagine what I would have had to go through if they had hid the corpse, instead.
Boris: Would you give the dog a hair of the man that bit him?
Our big cat Archie–fluffy and colored like Socks–was so afraid of the vacuum cleaner that if we even brought a piece of the tubing near him, he would back up and swat at it.
But he wasn’t afraid of cars. Not a bit!! We lived on a narrow street in Hermosa Beach, CA, and he would sit in the middle of the street–this was his street–as if he were daring the cars to hit him! (None ever did.) That was the third place where we lived that Archie was with us; when we moved from the first, on Second Street not far from the beach, to Seventh Street, up a hill and a mile away, he disappeared. When my mother and stepfather went back to the old house to pick some things up, there he was! He had crossed a busy street, Pacific Coast Highway, and walked several blocks to out old home. And now he looked at my Mom as if saying, Where have you dumb humans been? And where’s the furniture?
Archie was one of a kind and we miss him a lot.
“If you drive an automobile, please drive carefully–because I walk in my sleep.”–Victor Borge
I was about 12 years old and playing in the back yard. My dad was raking leaves. The nosey neighborhood busybody came down the alley and struck up a conversation with my dad.
My dog, Colonel, a large shepherd/elkhound cross, walked over by them and sat down, seemingly listening to the conversation.
Evidently he disagreed, because he stood up, walked over, lifted a leg, and peed on her.
My laughter drowned out my dad’s apologies.
My half-sister’s family has an assortment of cats and two weiner dogs, one of them named Princess. Whenever my sister said “Get the cat! Get the cat!”, Princess would take off for the nearest cat and chase it down the hallway. The floor was wood, and always waxed up nicely. At the end of the hallway, the cat would make a quick left turn into a bedroom, and Princess would try to follow, but end up scrabbling against the wood and sliding into the closet door with a loud thump.
I have (or rather, am owned by) a small black cat named Raven. When she adopted me, she was about six months old and pregnant. My parents started calling her Murphy Brown, because she was a single mother.
The summer after my junior year of college, when I brought her home with me, my mom was getting ready to wallpaper the kitchen. My younger brother had pulled the refrigerator away from the wall so that we could measure the entire wall and figure out how much paper we needed.
When we were done measuring, we went into the family room to watch a tv show. On a commercial break, my brother went back to the kitchen and started pushing the refrigerator back in.
My mom and I raced back into the kitchen to find my brother hauling the refrigerator back out and my semi-squashed cat hauling herself out from the tiny space between wall, cabinet, and refrigerator. Raven recovered faster than my brother did.
During my childhood we had a small calico cat named Jo-Jo. She would eat dog food; fresh-caught fish (my Dad used to fish at the Santa Monica Pier); cake; candy, ice cream; bread–in fact the only thing she would not eat was cat food!
Jo-Jo’s son Buttons beat up our neighbors’ dog Puddles.
Archie, who started out swatting our dog Duchess (an all-black dachshund/cocker mix) since she came into the household, once rubbed against her, like he might against a human’s ankle–and we never let him hear the end of it!
We were having roast beef; and of course Archie and Duchess were waiting for their cut. Mom put a small hunk of meat on a saucer, on the floor, and called Archie (Duchess would come too whenever we called “here, kitty, kitty…”) Arch looked at the roast beef and sniffed it, then walked away; In came Duch and she gobbled it down! Mom said to Archie, “See, you didn’t get any, you big dumb!” He looked at her as if to say, Why, whatever do you mean?
My older brother Gary, who had been in a band in high school, was working at TRW and got in a small band there, with an orchestra-style tuba. Archie was sitting on a bed in a bedroom upstairs when Gary trundled the tuba case upstairs. He assembled the tuba, attached the mouthpiece, gave one loud blast–and Archie must have run down the stairs at 90 miles an hour!
My sister decided to see what Duchess would do with a raw egg. The dog carried it around for a while in her mouth, then dropped it back onto the kitchen floor, uncracked. (We often gave both pets a raw egg in milk; they always had such healthy fur.)
Janice once tried to give Archie a bath! I was in the next room and saw her bring Archie into the bathroom, and her her fill the bathtub. Then she must have tried to put him into the water–and I hear him give an angry yowl! ‘Don’t you put me in that water! I’ll scratch you up!’
I have about 30 people over for a BBQ, most of us are in the backyard. Everything is going real smooth, Then my cat Frank jumps over the backyard fence with a big ole’ bird in his mouth (I guess he wanted me to BBQ it) jumps down off the fence and tries to go inside so he can have a little snack. I manage to close the door before he can go in, Frank gives me this really odd look goes to the neighbors yard to enjoy the meal. Then we all notice that the bird wasn’t dead yet, everyone stops eating for a few minutes and watches Frank. Frank knowing that he isn’t quite fitting in with the party takes the bird around the corner so he can eat in private.
My kitty teases my dog all the time. She’ll run by her or scratch her all the time until my dog decides to chase after my dear cat.
The cat, being much faster than the dog, gets a large lead pretty quickly. She will stop until my dog catches up, and then will proceed to run again as fast as she can.
