August 09, 2005
Cross-species (mis)communication
In The Other End of the Leash, Patricia McConnell talks about how humans and dogs miscommunicate. Here Sage -- a cat in the HOPE program -- demonstrates that it also happens between cats and dogs. Specifically, she is demanding grooming in cat language (by walking up, lowering her head and expecting licks on the forehead) while Sprite (the dog) is wondering what this all about and is desperately trying to avoid eye contact with her. In this case, with a submissive dog, it is all harmless and funny, but you can definitely see where inter-species communication can go awfully wrong when their body languages are so different.
Of course, you could say that cats and dogs get along just fine -- as long as everybody knows that cats rule the universe. Sage thinks so, that's for sure.
Posted by cwirving at August 9, 2005 09:51 PM