Silly Cat

Silly Cat  (E) A Writer's Cramp Entry for 2-5-2017 #2111089 by Chris Breva

The prompt for the 2-5-2017 Writer's Cramp is " once knew a horse raised with mules. He sat, rump down – something horses don’t usually do.

Imagine a cat raised among dogs. Would he lose some of his catness? Would he fetch balls, walk on a leash, and attempt to bark?

Write a story about a cat who thinks he’s a dog."

567 words



I can tell you a true story about a cat raised with a litter of pups. We lived on a large farm and had all sorts of animals. Many of the animals we had were livestock and many others pets. Two of the animals were had were a dog who was a bitch and a female cat. The bitch and the cat both got pregnant and I don't recall the timing of which was which. However the bitch was nursing at the same time the female cat would have been nursing. The female cat however only had three kittens, two of which did not make it. She left the third to go out for some reason. While she was out she was run over by a car and killed We were left with a kitten that we had no idea what to do with. Somebody suggested putting it down but that was not the answer. Somebody else suggested feeding it with an eyedropper but we couldn't afford milk for ourselves a lot of times. Finally the suggestion was made to let the female dog nurse it. Everybody shrugged and thought "What the heck?"

So the kitten was placed among the puppies and the bitch began raising it as if it were her pup! The kitten and the puppies bonded and became a family. It was comical to watch the much bigger puppies play with the kitten, but they were very gentle as if just assuming it was the runt of the litter! They never once got rough with it and taught it to fight like a dog! It probably would have been better off if it had learned to fight like a cat because any cat can handle even a St. Bernard with ease.

This motley crew played together for months and the cat did pick up a few of the dog behaviors. It tried to play fetch but couldn't bite onto either a ball or a stick because it's mouth simply wasn't that big. Instead it simply played with it. One thing it did do that most cats don't do is sit on its behind like a dog. The typical behavior of a cat is to simply lie down. So the cat acted like a dog.

A few years later somebody dumped a puppy near our house. It was very obvious that the pup was at best two weeks old, probably younger and had no chance of survival without a mother. However we had no nursing dogs. What we did have was a cat who had lost three of her litter. (It was a different cat.) So we remembered the situation with the cat, who was still with us even then, and we placed the puppy with the mother cat. She adopted it hesitantly but since it was practically a newborn whose eyes weren't even open yet she took it in. As the puppy developed he acted like a cat. He would swat at his opponents rather than bite them. What was funniest was to watch him hunch his back up before he attacked!