Post for: #cat ^{(3 Posts)}

Barley, a dog, is captured on camera pulling hard on her leash to try to get closer to a wary cat visible at the top of the frame. One of Barley’s many fans recently quipped that Barley is “only one or two steps from being perfect.” One such step would be her unsavory interest in cats. While Barley will show a lot of enthusiasm in her approach toward other dogs, and will show fleeting and casual interest in other furry animals (such as squirrels), she becomes laster-focused if she ever sees a cat. This tunnel vision does not seem pro-social. I wouldn’t try to stage such an encounter (by, say, approaching a cat on purpose), because there are too many ways doing so could go sideways. However, it so happened that I was getting my phone out to take an unrelated picture of Barley when she spotted the cat pictured above and started to scrabble forward along the pavement. I managed to snap this picture as I was steering her away from the encounter, and figured the image came out clearly enough that it would be worth documenting this facet of her personality.

Barley, a dog, sits on one side of a glass door, scrutinizing a black cat facing it on the other side. Over the years, I’ve seen signs like these available for sale in novelty shops countless times, so it’s self-evident that some market exists for them. Nevertheless, I’m always mildly shocked to see them in the wild, visible from the street no less. For the home owner who aspires to the rhetoric of Happy Bunny without any irony, whose only embrace of edge comes in the form of a counter-space-devouring $2k knife block that includes only three knives that they know how to use.

Juniper, a dog, is unsure what to make of a trio of lion cubs on a television screen. Dogs seem to be pretty good at recognizing when other mammals are juveniles. I have it on good authority that Juniper did not display the same level of reflective aggression she normally brings to her confrontation with screen beasts when these bumbling lion cubs came on screen.