Our dog is an absolute coward. She’s by no means a small dog, being a rough collie, German Shepherd, Great Pyrenees, bloodhound and whippet mix but a coward nonetheless. Our cat on the other hand, is not a coward and a bit of a sadist on top.
Over the past few years, various dogs have shown up at our house. Some of them are generally good with cats, some of them would like to kill the cat and some, despite being smaller, would like to kill our dog. Regardless of their intentions, the outcome is always the same. They run at the cat. The cat unfazed starts running back at them and inevitably there’s a lot of yelping as the cat gives whatever dog a proper clawing. Even when they ignore the cat and go for the dog, the cat will intercept and chase the dog off as if to say, “this is my dog and I’m the only one who can bully it.”
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Our dog mostly takes it in stride and tries to play with the cat regardless. The cat will entertain this sometimes but will also take out her anger on the dog if, for example, we’ve kicked her outside when she didn’t want to go.
Our dog will not fight the cat, but simply try to run away or hide (this is her approach to pretty much anything scary). Yesterday, as I left the house, I let the dog back in, not realizing she was covered in mud. Normally, this wouldn’t be that big of a deal. She would go lie down on her bed and keep the mud contained. On this particular morning, however, it appeared the cat was in a particularly foul mood and started going after the dog. The dog having nowhere left to go, jumped on the bed.
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Now covered in mud, the bedding needed to be washed. Unfortunately, our well was being repaired, meaning we were getting our water from a tank mounted on the back of a pickup. The tank didn’t have enough water to run a full load of laundry. My wife and I both went to work. Coming home late in the day, we fed and put the kid to bed before we could get to the laundry situation. Now, our dryer is really slow and takes two hours for a full cycle and there was a load ahead of the bedding already. My wife fell asleep on the couch before crawling into my son’s bed with him. I waited till 1 a.m. for the bedding to dry… and promptly overslept the next morning.
