Dont kid yourself, if your cat ever got the chance it’d eat you and everyone you care about…
Well someone had to say it…
I know one of my cats would bring me down and snap my spine. How? One’s tried. Repeatedly.
He’s a fixed white male cat, usually a scardey-cat (heh) but a good hunter in general and fairly large. Not large enough, but big enough to be fairly heavy.
He is pure white, but does not know it, so I can see him on my walks about my property. In the dun-colored grass he stands out like a sore thumb, kneading the ground and looking at me like a sniper looks at his target.
I walk closer, but not right towards him. I’ve played this before, too. I maintain an even gait and act distracted, in general making myself an easy target for anything big enough to bring me down.
He strikes! I, as prepared as he was, stop dead. He still has momentum, however, and now he’s on two legs. A cat on two legs is a cat half-paralysed, and he knows it.
I let him jerk along in the spastic dance of defeat, his front paws up as if he is surrenduring to the superior size and intelligence of the two-legged food-beast. He falls forward after a few steps, and leaves the scene. His pride may be shattered but he is free to build it up at the expense of the local fauna.
One of his female compadres stalked a wild turkey, a tom in the full flush of adulthood, but refrained from actual pursuit. Cats have little regard for size discrepancies, but they are not the fanatical hunters wolverines or badgers are. Cats have a better sense of scale.
Most of the time.
Luckily, of my cats, the better hunter worships me. The other is too stupid to see anything other than kibble and pounce treats as a food source. I’m sure they’d start in on me after I’d been dead a few days, though.
As far as if the cat were bigger, how MUCH bigger? If I was an inch tall in relation to the cats, I’m sure they’d bat me around for a while then do me in when the game got tired…
Our Issac cat was engaged in a prolonged attempt to kill (and presumably) eat my father-in law. Issac would stalk and pounce, and end up being dragged around the house as my father-in-law failed to notice 14 pounds of housecat hanging off his blue jeans. Issac’c best move was to hide behind something, and then shoot up four feet into to air for a one-two punch to chest. This never worked.
ROTFLMAO*
That’s too funny. I know that Buttercup (who is constantly hungry despite the fact that she gets fed about 3-4 times a day)would kill and eat me if she could. She’s already tried to bring me down on several occassions, despite the fact she’s been an indoor kitty and never hunted anything larger than a wadded up ball of foil her entire life. She likes to hide kind of behind the bed and when my back is turned…whammo!Up over the bed and latched onto either my back or my butt, whichever she manages to get to first.
IDBB
The diary of a cat proves that your cat wants you dead.
This is why I own a dog. Not only is he happy to simply watch footie with me on television (which is the only way to watch footie in the U.S. after all) he has more taste than to back buggery Arsenal! 
Dogs also lack that sneaky quality. The sneakiest thing that Spunky dog does is lurk around and try to get his nose into the kitchen garbage can. Since he’s a foot tall and it’s two feet tall, that doesn’t happen often. I’m pretty sure that he has no designs on eating any of us any time in the near future.
I’ve been a Cat server all my life. You don’t realize it but your cat is protecting you. Ugaly knows you (and all the rest of us) are pathetic little pansies. “EEEK! A Mouse!” they hear all to often. I once had a seven pound Siamese that was going to kill some cows for me to cook. I had to snatch her away because I was the " 'fraidy cat". She did the crouch so low you can’t be seen and sneek up on them thing. My (then) wife and I watched and were amazed. The cows looked down on her, they had the advantage of height, and it looked to me as if they saw a cute little critter. If they only knew.
Another time I woke up in bed and felt something cold by my feet. I moved it around and then became fully awake. I pulled the sheets back and my (now ex)wife got very upset. Until I found the mouse head. My cat Cecil I think is a “made Cat”. It was a hit and a warning just like in “The Godfather”. Thats how he got the nickname Vlad the Impaler. I’ve always done what he says exactly how he says, no questions. Badda bing, badda boom.
So. Don’t get any crazy ideas. They leave a body? You get rid of it. Make it clean an’ don’ talk to noboddy. Cappish?
I think the thing here to keep in mind is how the animal in question perceives you and the issue of dominance. Most domestic dogs view humans as more-or-less dog-like; this is why it’s so easy to train a dog. They merely apply to you the social rules of their own species. Fortunately for us, the relentless social-climbing of the wolf has been largely bred out of the dog. Establish dominance over a dog, and no matter what physical shape you’re in, he will continue to regard you as dominant. This won’t work with wolves, as has been proved in numerous experiments with tamed wolves and even wolf/dog hybrids. Wolves incessantly look for weakness in their superiors- start losing lots of weight and stumbling frequently, and the wolf will come for you- your dominance is now in doubt, and the time to raise a dominance challenge has come.
Dogs, on the other hand, don’t think this far ahead. As long as you keep up the basic routine and keep filling the food bowl, the dog will always think you’re in charge. Of course, once you’re dead and he’s starving, all bets are off. (Most carnivores and omnivores will resort to cannibalizing the dead in survival situations. I’m sure we’re all familar with Alive)
Cats, on the other hand, have no such linear social hierarchy. House cats probably show deference to humans because of size alone, possibly coupled with a certain acceptance of humans as “cat-like”, although this doesn’t go anywhere near as far as dogs take it. Ctas have no real interest in dominance issues, except in close confinement- even then, they seek to put distance between themselves and their rivals if at all possible, rather than come to any sort of understanding, as a dog would. (Thus the fearful cat who spends the majority of his time hiding under the bed. For a dog, this would be near-psychopathic behavior; for cats, it’s par for the course when there’s trouble afoot.)
Cats also have no problem taking down prey larger than themselves without any help. One 300-pound tiger can bring down a 1,500-pound water buffalo. No wolf could hope to do the same. Dogs need constant reinforcement for their acts of violence from the pack structure. Cats need no such thing. House cats refrain from predatory or at least, successful predatory behavior towards humans because of size. A lion or tiger has no such inhibitions, which is why animal trainers usually reinforce their superiority over big cats with physical methods, like whacking them with big sticks when they get out of line. (Although biting them obviously works.)
Cats also seem to have more difficulty with impulse control than dogs; this probably comes from the differences in lifestyle. Group-living leads one to learn quickly how to control emotions and impulses for the sake of your own survival within the group. Solitary animals such as the cat have no need to control themselves, and might be at a disadvantage if they did. A wolf who waits for his pack knows he’s got a better chance to eat; a cat who waits misses an opportunity for dinner.
The point to all this rambling, I guess, is that dogs (and wolves to an extent) can be controlled solely through psychological means. Cats can only be controlled through force, or at least the threat of it. Your house cat won’t launch an attack because he knows he’s too small to be successful; a big cat knows he could kill you in the blink of an eye, so that big stick comes in handy more often than you’d think. All this leads to the opinion that house cats, if larger and stronger, would undoubtedly pose a real threat to their owners, while you could conceivably have a dog the size of a tyrannosaur and he’d still be loveable, goofy Rover.
But if you’re dead, of course, all this becomes moot. The choice between starving to death and eating the remains of a companion is to most animals no choice at all.
I sometimes wonder about Lucia. She sits at the top of the stairwell, just outside the bathroom door, as if she’s hoping I’ll trip over her some night and take a tumble down the stairs. Fortunately, she is a mostly white cat and stands out against the carpet even in dim light, so her plans to get me out of the way have been foiled time and again.
If it were Austen, who is orange and grey and blends into the carpet frighteningly well, I suspect I would be serious trouble. However, Austen seems to have the foresight to realize that if I did fall down the stairs and break my neck, there would be no one in the house to feed the kitties; once they had finished feasting on my corpse, they would starve to death or perhaps be taken back to the pound and put to sleep.
I’ve tried pointing this out to Lucia, but don’t know if it’s sunk in. She still sits out there on the landing, watching me…
One of our cats, Midnight, absolutely hates another of our cats, Clarence. Clarence doesn’t hate Midnight, but wants to dominate her (they’re both fixed, so there’s nothing sexual in this). They have been forced to accommodate each other. There was some big altercation when we were away during the Christmas holidays – the hallway was filled with multi-colored fur, indicating losses by both parties – and now they even sleep on the same couch. The point is, there was no permanent harm done. If cats treat humans as litter-mates, as Podkayne noted, we would be safe from harm, I think, even when our cats got a little pissed at us. (Our third cat, Lotta, would be the easiest – she gets along with everyone.)
Besides, even blown up, cats don’t have opposable thumbs. Midnight, at least, realizes that we’re the only way she’s gonna get outdoors, or get cat food, or get her daily “fix” of vaseline. As lonmg as she’s got that vaseline monkey on her back, we’ve got a hold over her.
Mama cats do eat their dead babies, so I am sure they would eat their dead mommies. Don’t think of it as heartless. Think of it as practical. Why waste good meat?
The little bastard! I knew there was something wrong with that darn cat. Now I know. He’s a gooner!
Time for a trip to the river with a sack and some bricks.
Screeme:
The Airzooka dosen’t sound so bad to me. I use a squirt bottle (plain water) and usually just showing the cat the bottle deters her. (Well, she was destroying a 350$ chair!) Not no mo’. 
Love my kitty. 
Well, I don’t know about yours, but mine wouldn’t. He loves me waaaaay too much and has other plans for me.
Yes; the whole ‘running through your legs’ thing when you are walking is just a ploy to try to trip you in the hope that your head will crack open so the cat can feast on your brains.
I just finished reading a short story called “Nine Lives To Live” by Sharyn McCrumb, and, well, let’s just say there might be more going on that meets the eye. owlstretchingtime, you haven’t killed a business partner recently, have you?
For those who are curious, here’s the plot:An architect is killed by his business partner and, to his shock, is reincarnated pretty much immediately as a large full grown tabby cat. Determined to avenge his death, he finds his former partner, moves in with him and, well, you can guess the rest.
CJ