Kato's Friends List

Kato has always run a very tight limited friends list with space for about 10 people. In order to have a new friend listed someone has to go. Usually my brother as she doesn’t see him very often. Kato adores her ten friends and will greet them with physical joyous loving exuberance which sadly is very difficult to tell apart from being attacked by an angry Rottweiler.

The other interaction lists in Kato brain are named “Whatever” which is pretty much the rest of the world and “Code Red”. Sometimes a new person will come onto her close radar and there is a long recess while Kato brain slowly and carefully compares the new person to her Friends List. Eventually she arrives at – no, don’t know you, and then Kato brain slowly decides which of her other Lists to allocate the person to. I’ve never worked out her formula for this decision.

I go to the post box with Kato at least twice a week and always read the un-changing times of collection placard. One day there will be a message for me “the black & orange dog lies down in the autumn sun”. Kato has been for months indifferent to the post box but yesterday she greeted the tall red thing like an old friend. She wagged her Las Vegas plume of a tail, happy little barks, bouncing and pushing between my knees to inhale deeply the smell of friend.

“Looks a bit like you” I remarked to Kato as I pushed an envelope in its gaping mouth

Another person approached with a letter and the possessive Kato glared, and let one sun ray reflect off her best canine tooth. The person waited until we moved on with Kato continually staring back over her shoulder at this interloper on her silent and still red friend.

So Kato’s friends list is now 9 humans and one pillar box.            

Caught between a cat and a chicken

Today on Kato walk there was a full size chicken just stood looking at us. We looked at it, the hen looked back. Kato sat down to go carefully through the Object Identification card file index in her head. Unable to identify what this object might be Kato decided it was a nothing and we should carry on. And then a flash of inspiration, Kato suddenly dug her paws in, turned 180 degrees as she had obviously arrived at “Food Item” for the unidentified feathered object.

That’s when we spotted the cat. The cat was not much bigger than the chicken, and gave Kato a look that said “What do you think, reckon I can take it?”

This communication confused Kato as cats generally treat her with disdain and certainly never ask for her opinion. Kato sat down, caught between a cat and a chicken, utterly flummoxed by this surreal situation. An object that was coming up as Possible Food and another object coming up as “Not food but chase anyway”

The trouble with chasing cats when you’re a pacifist jessy of a dog, is instinct tells you to do it, but the cats side of the deal is that they set off first. This avoids any potential embarrassment as dog never catches up with cat because what then?

This cat wasn’t moving. Kato made a half hearted gesture of beginning the chase but the cat just looked as if to say “shush”. Kato sat back down to consider this. Deciding that cat had just missed the starting gun Kato made another feeble lunge attempt to start the chase. Cat no move. Kato fidgeted to indicate to cat that dog/cat protocol was being seriously broken. Cat gave Kato a filthy look and adopted a dignified stealthy hunting position. Kato also adopted a more clumsy slump of a  hunting position. Being undecided which was her prey she faced away from both towards a fence. This was now a stalemate and I wondered if I should chase one of the prey and Kato do the other. But what if I caught the chicken – what then?

What if we ended up with cat and chicken, how would we ever get home?  Fox, hen and sack of grain is child's play compared to this.

I decided that we should both chase the cat, told Kato to walk and we walked directly towards cat. I stared at the cat. Kato stared at anything but cat. Cat still didn’t move, just looked a bit inconvenienced, peering around us at the chicken. We stopped again about 8 feet away from cat.  Kato grumbled about the number of cat/dog laws of nature and science that were being flouted here.

The impasse was broken by a woman appearing out of a house who looked like she might have lost a chicken. The woman gave me a dirty look as she headed towards the chicken. I was going to point out my dog being on a lead was no threat to her precious chicken, be more worried about this cat. But there was no cat. Cat had vanished. What the woman saw was me and Kato staring thoughtfully at her chicken.