In rereading my previous post, it seems to come off sounding a bit more abrupt than I had intended. I appreciate your apology, thank you. But I hope you can see that the complaint you received and the mod note you posted in response were a misreading of some lighthearted humour as apparently being serious. I’ve made a lot of jokes over the years based on my dog avatar (which is based on an actual Bernese Mountain Dog who was once my beloved companion) but anyone who knows me, even from the limited info in my posting history, knows that I love all animals.
On the internet, everyone knows you’re a dog.
The issue with the internet, with no tone of voice and all that, is that misreadings are common. It’s all too easy to accidentally hurt someone when your intent is good natured. And people who are upset really are hurt, even if it’s a minor hurt.
In all seriousness, this is what emoji are for. A 
can go a long way to signal to those who don’t know you that aren’t serious.
If i had warned you, i would certainly rescind it. (Not that I’d issue a warning for something that minor.) Warnings are about bad behavior, not misunderstandings. But notes are intended to redirect the conversation. I’m not certain that fully rescinding the note is right. I’m actually incredibly busy today (and I’m going to be late somewhere because I’m writing this to you now) but I’ll append something to the note later, to make it clear that your intent was to increase people’s fun, not decrease it.
Thank you, I appreciate it. With regard to emojis, I just want to point out – at the risk of looking like an inconsolable whiner – that all of the joke posts in question except one contained a cartoonish dog emoji. In fact I usually moved it to the last line to make it bigger. I expected – apparently wrongly – that a cartoon dog emoji would make my joking intent clear to everyone.
I think we’re at the point in the discussion where I can gently make fun of @wolfpup, @puzzlegal, and @Helena330 with plenty of love, and point out the inherent silliness of human communication.
WP - bark bark bark. Whine. Slobber. Bark. Whine. Silly dog face.
H330 - hiss! -raises hackles- -curves back into unnatural ‘U’ shape and backs away-
Puzzlegal - Bad Wolfpup! I don’t know what you did to freak out poor H330 but play nice with the kitty! Bad dog.
WP - whine, whine, whine. -sad puppy eyes- runs in circle, looks innocent.
H330 - slinks away from crazy dog who deserved to get in trouble for being so weird-
WP - whine, bark whine, puts face down on top of front paws with the ‘world is ending’ look
PG - -exasperated- No I don’t hate you WP, but be nice to the cat too. I’ll give you a treat later.
WP - bark, bark! -quiet whine-
We, like all social animals, are truly silly creatures. And I fully believe that all parties involved are acting in good faith and should be treated that way.
(I’m a dog guy.) I glanced thru the thread, and thought wolfpup hi-jacked it a bit too much, turning it from a Cat thread into a Dog/Cat thread.
ParallelLines — I enjoyed your Dog poster vs. Cat poster elucidation.
Shouldn’t it be down to the OP to decide what’s threadsh**ing ?
AFAICT, OP hasn’t offered an opinion.
I am not a mod. They decide those things. And I wanted to know who all besides me, had a cat avatar. Now I know, barring the scaredy cats who have one but Didn’t post.
It seems your thread even caused a couple of cat avatars.
It’s a general principle that OP doesn’t own a thread, so they wouldn’t have the final say.
I thought about looking for one, but I was curled up comfortably in a warm place and couldn’t be bothered.
Hmmmm…
Beautiful!
Yes. Doooo eeeeet.
The prevailing consensus in this thread seems to be, "this is totally in character for wolfpup and is a bit of a long-running joke of his, which is how we know it wasn’t threadshitting."
We shouldn’t be carving out exceptions in best-practice moderation for individual posters. If Joe Newbie had jumped into that thread to talk about how much cats suck, I doubt anybody would have complained about a redirection. “Threadshitting” is a really loaded term and I can see how it would raise hackles when pointed in one’s direction, but otherwise I think puzzlegal was spot on.
Besides, wolfpup was objectively wrong in that thread anyway, and probably deserves several warnings and maybe a suspension for crimes against our feline overlords.
“The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded.”
That seems unduly antagonistic. Just send him some chocolate as a peace offering.
That’s Kitnobi.
Feh on weak minded. My feline overlords (the snakes can’t be bothered) have battered and sleep deprived me to the point that whatever mental power I may have once had is long gone due to 2am shrieking for food and attention.
And then, when I manage to nap on rare occasion, disturbingly cold noses are applies to my face or other exposed surfaces that they might sneak in and steal my body heat.
They don’t need no stinkeen’ mind tricks!