[ExI] you can walk a cat, if he lets you

Mon Jan 25 23:20:47 UTC 2021

Thanks for sharing, Robert.  I've only had one Siamese and he was a joy -
very smart and kind of a joker.  I woke up one night to some strange
noise.  Went into the kitchen and Jack (he had one eye) was having a
terrific time with a leaf.  (I read about another nighttime strange kitchen
noise cat story:  the cat had learned to press down on the top lever of the
electric can opener.  He knew what he wanted and what gave it to him.)

I did have one white cat that I tried to put a collar on:  he went straight
up in the air at least 18 inches.  No, he didn't propel himself with his
back feet - he went straight up.  I don't know how he did it.

Another white cat I had was deaf.  I could call him to me by stamping my
feet on the wooden floor.  I got a thin rope with a collar (about 30 feet)
and took him out to a commons area where there were dogs.  He would see a
dog and start towards it, not having seen dogs before.  The dog would
notice and start towards the cat. Then the dog would stop and bark and bark
and the cat would keep coming.  Every dog my cat did that to turned and
ran.  Then the cat would run after him and I would drop the rope and catch
up with him when he gave up on catching the dog (he could have done it -
the fastest dog runs about 35-40 and the average cat about 30.)

bill w

On Mon, Jan 25, 2021 at 4:33 PM Robert G. Kennedy III, PE via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> >> Well, not everyone has a dog, and cats don?t play that game.
> > Cats do play that game!  It just takes a little bit of training to get
> > them used to the harness.
> > (And you have to put up with all the strange looks you get).   :)
> .  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>
> I had this wicked smart lynx-point Siamese named "Spanky" (his name when
> he was given to me).
> (Spanky was so clever he could even send email.  This was in the
> mid-1990s when there were half a dozen discrete steps required to do
> that.  One day I came home and spotted the connection status light on
> the dialup ISBM modem was lit and that there was a "you have mail"
> message on my Mac IIsi's screen.  For security, I *never* leave my
> computer connected when I leave home.  I rushed over, spun my office
> chair around, and there was Spanky sitting it calmly licking himself.  I
> clicked the box, and a message full of garbage popped up.  After saying
> "whiskey-tango-foxtrot-interrogative" to myself for a few minutes, I put
> it together--
> the cat had managed to initiate a connection, which is possible on the
> Mac with a keyboard shortcut (I forget which keys) but you have to be in
> the correct active window,
> then managed to switch active windows to Eudora (which was usually
> running in the background) which theoretically you could do by shifting
> the mouse and clicking at the right instant,
> then instantiate a new message (Ctrl-N which requires 2 paws),
> then populate the fields (To:, From:, Subject:, content, which works so
> long as you manage to hit Tab every once in a while),
> then Send the message which can be done with a single carriage return
> *if* the cursor was in the right place of the new active window.
>
> The message that was waiting for me was a bounce report, of course, b/c
> the outgoing message was gibberish, composed by a cat walking on the
> keyboard.  Like those monkeys eventually managing to typing
> Shakespeare's plays.
>
> Still, for a cat, he got pretty far.  If I'd had Autofill enabled (or if
> Spanky had better spelling/luck with his paws), somebody might have
> actually gotten that message.  Then I would have had to explain why to
> that person I appeared to be sending incoherent email.  In retrospect,
> that would have be a lot of fun, and that way, there'd be a witness too.
>
> There's a great passage from RAH's /The Moon is a Harsh Mistress/ in
> which Manny the protagonist is having a soliloquy on the nature of
> self-awareness, to reason out if "Mike" the lunar supercomputer was
> really alive.  Manny asks the reader:
> "Is bacteria self-aware?"
> "I don't think so."
> "Cats?"
> "Almost certainly."
> "How about people?"
> "I don't know about you, tovarishch, but *I* sure am."
>
> On to my actual comment (see, I'm driving the point home instead of just
> giving it carfare).
>
> I had dog-walking duty one day, and being lazy, I tried to walk Spanky
> with a harness at the same time.  He just sat on his butt in the
> driveway and refused to budge.  I tugged on the harness to get him to
> move.  After a couple of tugs, without warning he did a four-footed leap
> and executed some complicated mid-air maneuver involving a somersault or
> something.  I think I saw one rev on the roll axis, and one on the pitch
> axis.  Apparently none on the yaw, since he was pointed in the same
> direction when he landed.  Really, you'd have to have been an Olympic
> ice skating judge to parse the motion.  Anyway, Spanky landed in one
> place, and the harness with the lead still attached (and me still
> holding the dumb end of the lead) landed in another.  It was the most
> amazing feline acrobatic act I've even witnessed.  He just stared at me
> and licked himself.
>
> I gave up and just walked the dog anyway.  To my surprise, Spanky
> bestirred himself and trotted along.  When Kewpie pooped, Spanky pooped;
> when the dog peed, he peed.  Otherwise he kept pace with the dog,
> neither ahead nor behind.  So this became a thing with us--it did
> startle the neighbors, but they got over that.  Now as you know,
> primates and canines are cursorial hunters, felines are generally not.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting
>
> So after a few hundred meters, Spanky would be worn out and panting.  So
> he'd give me a plaintive look, then I'd have to pick him up and carry
> him the rest of the way.
>
> This is why they say, "dogs have owners but cats have staff".
>
> Lynx-point Siamese is my favorite breed of cat, because they're so
> freaking smart, and social, and slinky, and beautiful, and have such an
> amazing range of vocalizations.
>
> Spanky's been gone 16 years, but I still miss him.
>
> K3
>
> On 2021-01-24 16:24, extropy-chat-request at lists.extropy.org wrote:
> > Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2021 21:23:19 +0000
> > From: BillK <pharos at gmail.com>
> > To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> > Subject: Re: [ExI] rent a dog
> >
> > On Sun, 24 Jan 2021 at 19:18, spike jones via extropy-chat
> > <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> Well, not everyone has a dog, and cats don?t play that game.
> >> _______________________________________________
> >
> >
> > Cats do play that game!  It just takes a little bit of training to get
> > them used to the harness.
> > Loads of videos.........
> > <
> https://duckduckgo.com/?q=taking+cats+for+a+walk&t=ffab&atb=v154-1&iar=videos&iax=videos&ia=videos
> >
> >
> > (And you have to put up with all the strange looks you get).   :)
> .  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >
> >
> > BillK
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20210125/3b526d33/attachment-0001.htm>