I don’t think this is strictly true. Dogs are, to be fair, more uniform and rigid with their approach to responsibility–Lawful Good, if you will–whereas cats are markedly less so. But anyone who’s spent any amount of time in a house with multiple cats will notice an ever-changing pecking order in which dominance is frequently challenged, sometimes daily, and applies separately to different territories in the house. Once the heirarchy is agreed upon, the cats will coexist nicely even if it means a dominant cat sharing his space with a lesser one. Part of that coexistence means shared duties when it comes to protecting the various territories and their contained possessions such as high sleeping locations, fluffy cushions and the sundry wandering food & tummy-rub dispensers. I’ve actually seen housecats (4 in this particular case) set aside their differences to team up on a neighborhood dog who had wandered into the house. They worked just like a pride of lions, all taking turns alternately lying in wait or launching an ambush to frighten or annoy the intruder. Once the dog left they chilled for a couple hours, liking themselves very much, and then resumed their previous territorial negotiations.
So…yeah. Inasmuch as a cat recognizes a human as a valuable resource they will do what they must to protect it. I’ve had maybe 8-10 cats that I really got to know well, and out of those, only 3 seemed to show something greater than self-interest when it came to the peoples. All of them were “normal” cats until they reached about 5 years old, around which time they started to act like they recognized they owed a duty of some kind to the rest of the pride.
I love it, another resurrection of a long ago topic.
So here’s my experience with a very special cat.
My brother in law came over one day, dragging his doberman along as usual. They two of them were standing just inside the door, no doubt wondering if the dog would be welcomed in our house. (He wasn’t.)
Our cat came around the corner and stood at the top of the stairs for a few seconds watching us.
Then she trotted down the stairs right to the mutt and without pausing, swiped her claws across the doberman’s nose.
The dog yelped, the blood flowed, my b.i.l. expressed shock and the cat turned and walked back up to the top of the stairs. She turned, looked at us and disappeared down the hall.
A number of years ago, I adopted a cat, rather it adopted me. I moved into the upstairs of an old two story house. When I checked out the place, The blonde tabby was there asleep on the mattress that served as the living room couch. It looked up and nodded its head as if I had passed some sort of residency test. Anyway, about eight months later I was standing on the front porch watching the park across the street and a young German Shepard headed for me (I think it saw me as potential for a pat on the head or something) and started to jump up on me. At this point, the cat somehow opened the screen door, ran to me, and pounced on the dog’s back and rode it around the yard like a bucking bronc, taking bites out of the dog and sinking its claws in deeply the entire time. When it was clear the dog was not going to stay around for more, the cat hopped off and came back to me and circled me protectively making it clear that if you came near me, you would have to deal with her.
The same cat bit a girl on the ankle who shared my bed (for the first time) and threw her arm (the girl not the cat) around me in the middle of the night. This was almost the last time I shared my bed with this girl.
I thought I related this one, but I don’t see it in the thread:
We had an emergency one night. I thought Pepper Mill was having a heart attack or something, and phoned 911. The emergency team that came to take care of Pepper Mill found Clarence, our huge one-eyed Maine Coon, standing on top of her with his ears back, tail fluffed out, and hackles raised, refusing to let the EMT anywhere near Pepper.
Despite her situation and pain, she had to laugh, and to call him off so the EMT could attend to her. (Fortunately, it turned out to be nothing serious, and she was okay the next day.)
The Siamese we had when I was in high school paid no attention to my boy friend when he would visit until he put his arm around me. Then Tuki would fly into action and come at him, claws out, hissing and whapping his tail back and forth. If the boyfriend took his arm down and didn’t attempt to touch me, there would be no further harm done.
I used to wonder if my mother somehow bribed the cat.
my cat does this as well! it happened when I was actually crying one time and my cat came up to my face to “yell” at me, almost like she was asking what was wrong. I’ve fake cried since and my cat reacts the same every time. However my cat is extremely protective of me, if there is a neighbor’s cat outside my patio she goes into a full on fit of hissing and growling at the glass door, as if she is telling the other cat this is my territory. She also will get in front of my boyfriend when we fight and hiss at him if he raises his voice at me. I’ve had my cat since she was 2 weeks old, abandoned by her mother and left to die in a alley since she was the runt. Bottle feeding and excessive nurturing has resulted in a cat that acts more like a pit bull when it comes to looking out for me, yet not so intimidating when my guard animal is a 7 pound black Siamese/Burmese mix.
