Cats are not like Dogs

Some animals love to be pampered and loved and man-handled, and some do not.  Dogs are a favorite animal because they love to play around; they love walks, they love chasing balls, they love fetching sticks, they love wagging their tails, and they just love people in general.  Cats are a little different.  Cats have a more sultry way of living, they allow people to pet them,  and feed them, and clean up after them, but cats live more independent of people than most dogs.  —This is why you cannot put a cat on a leash and walk it around the block like you can a dog, at least this is the story of one such instance.

One bright summer day one of my brothers went outside and, to his delight, he found a stray cat.  Now, my family lives on a farm, we know how to treat animals, we know how to work with them—or at least we should.  He carefully coaxed the cat over and then began patting.  The next logical step in his mind was to try and tame it.  Why tying a cat to a metal chair on a cement sidewalk is going to tame it I'm not sure, but my brother was convinced that it would help.



So the cat sat outside in the hot, tied to a chair and, after several minutes it tried to escape.  It bolted forwards, was jolted backwards by the rope, and then startled by the scraping of the metal chair's legs against the cement.  The screeching chair would send it into another bout of panic and it would try to spring away again, only to find the metal chair following after it.  Perhaps you sense a pattern here.

As a kind, slightly more sensible person, I eventually convinced my brother to let the poor cat go.  He did, very carefully, and it ran away—unsurprisingly.  The funny part of the story comes about a week and a half later.  My brother and I were walking outside talking to each other.  After a little while a soft mewing started coming from the bushes and my brother began mewing back to the unseen cat.  When, out of the bushes, came the very cat that he had tied up earlier.

I have never relied on cartoons to be realistic—they are not meant to be realistic, but this cat's eyes really did double in size.  The cat paused, stared, and then disappeared, leaving only a small trail of dust in its wake.  I suppose its traumatizing experience with my brother had had a permanent effect on the poor cat.

We never saw it again.