Did you ever have the feeling that someone was watching you?
From the time I arrived, Miss Kali has been watching me. Even when her eyes are closed, even when she’s not in the room, I can feel her staring. Sometimes, I think she can stare with her ears.
Of all the challenges a pup might face in the new home, I reckon that getting on the right side of the resident cat ranks up there with, “how to work out where the Sam Hill I am supposed to piddle” and “why does everyone steal my food”.
Miss Kali was kind of spoiled. She’d had the folks and the house to herself for 4 years before I came along and got it pretty much the way she wanted, right down to the cheek grease on the sofa and random threads plucked from the rugs.
It’s not like dogs weren’t entirely unknown to her. Mum brought sick ones home from time to time and she also got to terrorise the neighbour’s pooch on the rare occasions it strayed into her garden.
Puppies however, were obviously a complete mystery. What she didn’t understand was that I just wanted to be friends. And share her dinner.
I tried EVERYTHING. I brought her my toys, played with her toys, offered the paw of peace, tried speaking cat, cleaned up her litter tray, and tidied away the crumbs on her mat. Often, I just sat quietly near her, wagging my tail, so she knew I was on the side of goodness and niceness.
Nothing worked. Even worse, she stopped staring and began to ignore me. I obviously had to try much harder.
One day, I saw the lolly gobble in action. This was a daily event when the folks hid cat kibble around the house in order to:
1) make Miss Kali burn off calories searching for her food
2) reduce her need to hunt actual living things.
It didn’t work, of course, but it did introduce me to THE POT.
Miss Kali loved the pot… even when it wasn’t lolly gobble time.
It was obviously a special place for my future bestie and so I staked out the pot in the hope that we would find common ground.
Then one day, Miss Kali hid in the pot for 5 hours and somehow I got blamed.
The language barrier seemed insurmountable. Then I caught the folks staring at us one day and chatting about the differences between dogs and cats.
Here’s a crash course on a few of those differences and the lessons I learned.
Why Dogs Don’t Meow…
It seems that Miss Kali and I share a great great great… grandmother. 50 million years ago, Granny Miacis planted a family tree that soon branched into Canidae (that’s me) and Felidae (Miss Kali).
DNA analysis has confirmed that I evolved from gray wolves in East Asia at least 15,000 years ago. Archaeological evidence suggests people interacted with an even wilder ancestor 400,000 years ago!
No one knows exactly why wolves joined the campfires but I’d say they saw an easy meal. Whatever the case, we have had a long time to get to know and love our human companions.
Cats, on the other hand, were one of the last animals to be domesticated. The Egyptians recognised their value as ratters in 4000 BC. Cats back then were descended from the African Wildcat, or Kaffir cat and treated like Gods. Which explains A LOT!
Those cats eventually migrated across Asia to Europe, and bred with their relative, the European Wildcat. The domestic cat wasn’t officially recognised until 1758.
Lesson 1: Our views on the world and our place in it are quite a bit different. I love all company. Miss Kali prefers it on her terms.
In the wild, us dogs are cursorial hunters and pursue our prey (or tennis ball) over open terrain until it gets tired and then we knock it over. We are omnivores and can eat just about anything.
Cats are ambush hunters, stalking their prey alone, then pouncing. Their bodies are designed for climbing and slinking, and brief bursts of speed when necessary. They have much more specific dietary requirements than us.
Lesson 2a: Miss Kali doesn’t like being chased or licked or barked at.
Lesson 2b: I can have all the dropped peas, spilt soup, bottle caps and whatever else I find on the floor but Miss Kali has first dibs on the meat and biscuits.
With this in mind, I adopted a different approach and went about my own business. There were plenty of other things in the house to play with, even if they didn’t make as many fun noises as Miss Kali.
Strangely, this ‘non’ tactic was the most effective of all and I made an interesting discovery.
Lesson 3: Cats are very curious
Because once I left her alone, Miss Kali began to take an interest.
There was no sudden breakthrough but I knew we were on the right track when Miss Kali ambushed my tail and later let me ‘share’ the sofa.
4 months on, we are almost besties…
Coming next: “Running Free”, where the folks go on holiday and I visit the pack