This thread reminds me of the many videos on youtube I’ve seen where big, tough dogs are afraid to pass through a door/descend a staircase because a scary little cat is sitting too close to their path. In none do the cats seem hostile, they just stare passively at the dog and the dog can’t bring itself to walk past the cat.
Perhaps “That was no ordinary rabbit!”.
Ninja’d by Bonum_Legatum
That would be our dog Ivy. I was in the kitchen the other day with Ivy, and one of our fearsome (as a teddy bear) cats walked in. Ivy spotted her and ran yelping from the room as if she was just attacked by a bear. If someone else had heard it, i am sure thet would swear we were beating Ivy.
My neighbor’s sheltie loves to be outdoors in the summer even with other neighbor kids making a racket and playing all manners of sports. However, the kids one time had a kite they were flying less than 50 feet up. The sheltie was having none of it and wanted back in his house NOW! Don’t know if he thought it was a UFO or some sort of bird of prey but he absolutely hated the thing.
My daughter has a cat named Onyx who is terrified of a toy bird on a stick. As a kitten, he had picked up the bird and started to walk away with it, but the bird is attached to a stick by a short piece of string. The evil stick began following Onyx. He sped up and the stick pursued! Onyx ran around the room bouncing off the furniture with the possessed stick smacking and clattering on everything right behind him! He eventually let go of the bird and hid under the coffee table. He will not go anywhere near that toy even a year later. He growls and hisses at it, and slinks away beneath the coffee table, the only place in the house that he has determined is bird-proof.
My cat, Beanie, has the opposite problem. He seems nearly fearless of things which could do him harm. He will sit beside a running lawnmower or follow me around while I use the chainsaw. He isn’t stupid. He casually moves out of the way of the mower, my tractor, or my truck, but never freaks out in the process. I think he assumes that regardless of whatever it is I am doing, I am not going to hurt him with my noisy devices.
Beanie recently tore the stickbird apart, so Onyx no longer has to fear it.
Humans, apparently.
We got two kittens in October. They’ve been exclusively inside cats their entire lives. We had them both spayed in January and now both of them (one worse than the other) act very skittish around people – even us, who they live with 24/7 – most of the day. They refuse to be held, only reluctantly allow themselves to be petted (they don’t seek it out and don’t seem to particularly enjoy it) and run away whenever a human approaches – except in the late evenings.
Oddly enough in the late evening they’ll jump up on the couch and curl up between my wife and I or, occasionally, climb onto her lap. During those times they’ll purr when petted, knead the couch (or her laps), and in general be affectionate. But during the rest of the day? They act like they are actively scared of us. It goes without saying that they aren’t abused, if anything they’re spoiled rotten. (Or would be if they acted spoiled. But we sure try to spoil them.)
Our two kids are older teenagers who spend most of their free time in their rooms so there isn’t really a change in routine after dinner. We’re all still doing the same stuff we do the rest of the day when we’re home. It’s not like late evenings are calmer or quieter – it’s always pretty calm and quiet at our house. But for whatever reason the cats seem to completely change personalities as soon as dinner’s over.
We used our fireplace for the first time last weekend. The overlords were quite curious but then decided that wood heat was quite nice:
One of my childhood dogs was a sheepdog/poodle mix named Smoky. Smokey was the most playful, affectionate, friendly dog who loved everyone, except she was a racist. She loved it when the mail man came around, except if he happened to be Black, she would freak out, barking as if she had witnessed the zombie apocalypse. And one day she was out in the yard when the neighbor’s Black cleaning lady appeared. Same reaction.
This thread sent me back into the zombie archives for one of my favorite threads of all time (c. 2014):
My Balinese cat, Linden, is terrified of entering a room that unexpectedly has had a small piece of furniture, an end table for example, that has been moved in a room, or when he’s surprised to learn I have brought in shopping bags when he wasn’t watching.
He approaches whatever it is in the slow, cautiously stretching foward to the point of his chest scraping the floor way of scared kittens which is hysterical to see a 12lb cat do.
Zoey isn’t really afraid of anything, although she treats the outdoors with deep suspicion.
Tramp is afraid of me when I’m standing, but when I’m sitting, she lurves me.
She’s also generally a spook and get scared by things that i can’t even see or hear. I’ll be chilling with Zoey in my lap, and we’ll hear scrabble scrabble scrabble ZOOM as a grayish blur runs past us. Zoey and I will look at each other with identical expressions of “What? I dunno shrug”
Our first dog, a cocker, absolutely hated it when I would stalk and swat a fly in her presence. As I surreptitiously drew nearer the fly she would begin to growl, which would get louder and more menacing until I made my final rapid swat, at which point she’d leap toward me with an explosive snarl. She wouldn’t make contact with me, but it was clear she was highly upset. I never knew if it was because she felt personally threatened by something that might be happening clear across the room, or if she identified with insect vermin.
I’ve only had one dog that ever emitted an audible fart. It was Bessie the Labrador. She was lying down at the time, and turned her head to look at her rear end in amazement.
Well, dogs know darn well to never trust a cat.
My dearly departed Ruby, a Boston Terrier, did not like sneezes; I think she was downright offended by them. That was the surest way to get her to leave the room. It got to the point where I’d instinctively go “Achoo. Sorry, Roo.”
And I’ve frequently told Stella (a shitzu mix) that if we are ever on some alternate reality version of the Newlywed game and the question is “what scares me most”, her answer is “school buses”.
Our parakeets, being rather low on the food chain in their natural habitat, are naturally suspicious of pretty much everything, including us humans. An anti-example though: they are free flighted in the family room - which means they spend time hanging out on the windowsill overlooking the back yard. When there are bunches of birds out there, the parakeets stand on the sill and squawk away.
We were confused, thinking the birds’ mindset ought to be “There’s a bunch of strange birds out there. Better be quiet so they don’t notice me and eat me!”. A friend pointed out that it might well be “Hey you strange birds, GET OFFA MY LAWN”.
Many years ago, we had cats (before I developed really bad allergies). One of the vets in the practice we went to was in a wheelchair. The first time we took the cat in, and that fellow was on duty, the cat took one look and that infernal contraption and began backing away in sheer terror.
Is he afraid or is he angry? As a teenager my brother had a ferret that was a very good boy…unless you put on gloves to clean his cage. If you forgot to shoo him out of the room first, he’d come over and bite the crap out of your gloved hands. He was definitely mad, not scared.
Well, he’s aggressive but I blame the aggression on fear, because there’s no reason I can imagine for him to be angry.
We concluded that Fang the ferret was furious because the gloves - which we had hundreds for years of because my parents had gotten them at whole sale cost from dad’s manufacturing employer - were latex and they reminded him of the vet’s.
That would make sense. Except they have no fear of snakes; they cheerfully attack them. They go through a hole in a wire fence with no hesitation (the only thing I can think of that’s somewhat similar). Like I said… weird animals.
My cat is terrified of sneezes. Not only that, he’s learned to sense when I’m about to sneeze. I’ll be petting him, and he’ll be happy and purring, until I feel a sneeze coming on. He’ll look at me for a second and then flee, so he’s out of the room before the sneeze actually happens.
We had a racist boxer. Every Black he would encounter, he would put up a fuss. As I was trying to drag him away on his leash, he’d be standing on his hind legs, barking and growling. I think maybe it was because he couldn’t see their features as well. 
Yesterday, I had Huck (Great Dane) out on a leash walk downtown. Everyone he saw, he’d pull me over so he could greet them. There was a person that was really bundled up against the cold. Hat, hood, scarf around their face. You could barely see this person’s face at all. Huck started growling and barking. I’m sure he couldn’t compute what it was, he couldn’t see a face or features. The poor person stopped dead in their tracks - I’m sure frightened. Nothing like a Great Dane bark to scare you to death.