August 12, 2005
Spike writes home...
From the HOPE mailbox:Attached pictures: [1] [2] [3]Hi, Spike here.
I have been in my new home since the end of June and expect to have my new people fully trained soon. I have been busy and this is the first opportunity I have had to write.
I also have been keeping up with my favorite shows on the Animal Planet... the ones about big cats in North America. Somehow the producers neglected to contact me about my segment and interview for that show. I qualify as a big North American cat. I'll have to email them about that.
'Not much else is new. I just thought I'd give you an update. I send my best regards to all my 2-legged and 4-legged friends at HOPE.
Yours mewly,
Spike >^..^<
Posted by cwirving at 07:57 PM | Comments (0)
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 09:51 PM | Comments (0)