Thunder storms? The cats line up for thunder storms. Can’t get enough of sitting in a window and watching the violence. At such times Skippyroo needs to Be One With Nature, so she heads to the front porch for optimal viewing/soaking. Little freak.
Then we have the Asscat Moments involving everyday objects. Objects, it appears, that stalk and sudse an invisible evil. Muwhahahahaha.
Hankyspank gets an eyeful of the ironing board – for the love of God, the ironing board – and he’s splitsville.
Big Mac, confronted with a ceiling fan doing what ceiling fans do, flags down a kitchen cabinet, leaps inside, slams the door shut, and tells the driver: “Just drive. Drive, I tell you. Drive anywhere but here.”
Cardboard tubes freak out my parent’s dog. It’s bad when Christmas rolls around and all the wrapping paper gets used up. If we want to keep her off the furniture, we just put a cardboard tube on it and it suddenly becomes a dog eating chair.
So far I haven’t found anything that upsets my dog although if someone can tell me how to get him to stop eating spiders, I’d appreciate it. Ugh, spiders. shudder
The bag monster! One time the king of cats got the handle of a plastic grocery bag looped around his neck. The sound scared him, so he tried to run away from it, but the faster he ran, the faster it chased him. He tore all over the apartment knocking over lamps and destroying plants. He finally crawled under the bed, where I was able to get the bag off his head. Poor kitty.
After that, I always kept the bags where he couldn’t get them, but he was always afraid of the plastic bag sound.
er… anyway, what surprises me is my roommate’s cat who does not fear moving cars. You often have to get out of the car, pick it up and move it off of the driveway so you can park. Honking your horn will scare it; however, this makes him freeze solid.
My mother’s dog was a funny one. He was afraid of fart noises. If I blew a raspberry at him, off he would run.
One day, he was stretched out in the living room when he himself farted. He scrambled to his feet and ran out of the room. This cracked me up to no end–how can a dog be afraid of his own farts?
One of the dogs I have now is afraid of our luggage on wheels. She flips out when they see us with the luggage. She also doesn’t like my key ring, for some reason.
Fear of vacuum cleaners - well, I can understand that. They´re big, they´re noisy, and they seem to follow the poor cat wherever he goes. But there must be more to it… now he´s transferred his fears to the broom. As soon as he sees it, his hair stands on end, he starts hissing like nothing I´ve ever heard before and finally hides under the bed.
He´ll never make a good witches cat.
A week or two ago, I had several guests over and a friend and I were sampling a bottle of Auchentoshan. We had settled down to watch a movie when my dear sweet dog wandered over to see what I was drinking. On a whim, I held the glass out for him to sniff – I wouldn’t give him any of it to drink, of course, even though he does like Guinness – and after one deep sniff, he recoiled in absolute terror. For the rest of the night, he was torn between wanting to get close to get a scritch on the head, and wanted to stay clear of the glass that burned his poor doggie nose.
Since then, whenever I take out a bottle and pour myself a splash, he stays well out of my way.
I have a horse. From their perspective, horses live in a world overpopulated with horse-eating monsters, and therefore, every unfamiliar object has to potention to be a HEM.
My mare is very sweet, gentle, and kind, and as horses go, fairly mellow. Camera flashes, big noisy trucks and/or cars driving RIGHT by her, lights, sirens, electic saws, even the typically horse-fear-inducing plastic bag does NOTHING to her. “Ho hum, a 20 ton truck…”
BUT…put an orange juice jug with a rock in it in her stall (meant to be a toy), and she cranes her neck, flares the nostrils, shows the whites of her eyes as she sniffs…before booking to the opposite corner of the stall with her butt facing the orange plastic HEM, eyes wide, ears back, and poised to bolt should it pounce.
While on the trail, she weirded out at a small fan-shaped fern (or palm, not sure) plant. In her skewed perspective, it must’ve seemed like a green monster reaching out to get her. I guess.
Most recently she ran away from a plastic Sprite bottle with a couple of rocks in it, discovered in her turnout.
Nevermind she weighs over 1000lb…those bottles are going to GET HER one day!
Once when I was making a big meal I noticed my dogs cowering in the corner. I couldn’t figure out what the problem was until I started unrolling the foil. Instant, cowering and accusatory looks. Now they run every time I even grab the handle of that drawer.
I’ve said it before but it’s the equivalent of doggie Godzilla.
My old dog who died last year was afraid of lots of things: Frisbees, beach balls, bodies of water. She wasn’t afraid of lot of things that probably should have scared her: porcupines, skunks, bears, and bulls. She loved the vet too. He would poke her and prod her and stick her. She just smiled and wagged her tail.
My other dog is afraid of little children. She’s pretty much used to my nephew and nieces, but any other child under the age of about 12 scares her to death.
The vacuum - also known as the “evil kitten sucker-upper”.
The shower - Spend too long in there (or hubby and I shower together) and cats start crying for our release from the evil water. “They’ll wash away! Who’ll feed us?”
But weirdest of all… My cat is afraid of spoons.
SPOONS! As a kitten, I’d let her lick vanilla ice cream off my spoon – which would give her “brain freeze”. So now, hold out a spoon to her, she’ll squinch up her face and flip her ears back, then hide under the bed. I’m such a bad mommy.
One night, at my friend’s house, his dog decided she was terrified of another friend’s size 13 shoe. Hilarity ensued, since showing a dog a shoe and watching her tear across the carpet she’s not supposed to be on to go hide behind the shower curtain in the bathroom is a great party trick.
The next day, her therapy involved starting out with little shoes, then working up to the larger ones.
They say she’s made a full recovery.
A horse I used to train was terrified of people on crutches. Also, and I’m sure there’s a logical explanation, but I spent several hours getting him used to a coiled up rope (as in the stiff calf-roping type ropes) after I approached him holding one and he flew backwards in the crossties. However, if I tied the rope to the saddle, I could then work the rope from his back. Just couldn’t approach him holding it. I’m guessing he was abused with something similar, because he was normally one of the mellowest stallions I’ve ever met.
My ex-roommate’s dog despised pencil erasers. If we held a pencil near her, and told her to stay, she’d turn her head away in disgust until the pencil was removed. If not told to stay she’d high-tail it to her kennel, then stare back at the pencil wielder with a mixture of contempt and mistrust.
Hey, I just remembered something. Didn’t Billy Crystal’s character in one of those City Slicker movies cause a cattle stampede when he ground coffee beans using a battery-operated coffee grinder?
I have an old male cat who is afraid of everything. I got him from a shelter when he was young. He hissed at me, tried to whack me when I got close, so of course I said: “I’ll take that one.”
None of my family or friends has seen him. Some think he is a figment of my imagination. Recently we took in a pregnant stray. He came in the cat door one night, saw the tiny two-week old kittens running around, hissed at them and ran back outside. :rolleyes:
Our young male cat is deathly afraid of the LAWNMOWER MEN. Their arrival sends him streaking upstairs, not to be seen for hours. Unfortunately, they arrive in a diesel powered truck, so now he also freaks when the UPS man stops by.
We also have an old female who really isn’t afraid of anything. She’ll even walk up to dogs and hiss in their faces. Kinda cool.
Well, he’s not really afraid, but he was pretty upset.
My dogs are rather fearless. One day, how ever, Mr baboon walked in wearing a T-shirt with a huge Bob Marley face.
Dongle started barking and growling at Mr. Baboon. Not a good thing. We were puzzled as to why he would be acting like this, until it dawned at us that he was proctecing us from the evil Bob Marley.
I once frightened a horse with a walking stick a hiking/bridle trail; the rider told me that the horse thought I was going to hit it with the stick, even though I wasn’t doing anything threatening like waving the stick around. I had to put it down on the ground until they had gone past.
One of my cats is frightened by bubble-wrap. Not just the popping sound; she is alarmed merely by the sight of it.