The Canine-Feline Paradigm: Who Ate My Poop?

He’s not scared in this picture, but it’s darn cute (the kitten, not Evil Genius. Then again I guess he’s cute too…)

So we had this bright idea that we’d get a kitten.

Now before you start lecturing me about how the world is full of older cats that need a good home, keep in mind that I would LOVE to adopt another older kitty. However, we have a large dog that really wants a fellow animal that might tolerate him.  Not to mention that we already own one adult antisocial female kitty.

We’d been going to animal shelters for months trying to find a boy kitty that would coexist semi-peacefully with our pooch.  We sure didn’t have much luck.  Every time we went all of the young kitties were already gone, leaving us with a selection of very beautiful older female kitties.  Yes I wanted to take all of them home, but sadly I wasn’t allowed.  It was for their own safety-there was no way Rogue would let them live.

Recently we just happened to stop at the shelter at the right time.  They had many kittens to choose from, two whole litters as a matter of fact!  There was one kitten in particular that was quite a bit smaller then the rest.  Being one that watched Charlotte’s Web over and over again as a kid, I’m kind of partial to the runt of the litter.  His name was Percival, but of course since we are complete geeks we had to choose some sort of science fiction/superhero/fantasy name to go along with our cat Rogue and our dog Neo.

So that day he left the shelter as Percival, but he came home as James Tiberius Kat.  If you get the joke, then you are totally cool. The jokes are pretty much endless with this one.
For example:

The cat catches and kills a mouse, “He’s dead Jim.”

Yeah, I think we’ll keep this one.

Obviously we won’t be calling him Jim, we’ll be calling him Tiberius.  This little guy was 6 weeks old the day we brought him home.  He’s cute, he’s ornery, but is also a great cuddler, as you can see from the above picture. What he lacks in size he certainly makes up for in determination.  His favorite spot is on your lap or on your shoulder, because for some reason he thinks he’s a parrot.  He goes and goes like the Energizer bunny, until he drops right where he stops. He just can’t keep his eyes open and has to take a literal cat nap.

Only at our house a few hours and he was already driven to drink.

So how is it going between the canine and the feline?  I believe the following quote from Evil Genius pretty much sums it up:  “You’d think a 75 pound dog would be tougher than a 12 ounce cat.”

If nothing else, we are fully entertained.

Neo wants to play with Tiberius.  However he is fifty times bigger than the kitten is.  Therefore the wee one doesn’t want a whole lot to do with him yet.  There is a lot of sniffing from the dog and lots of hissing from the cat. The cat puts the dog in his place, the dog slinks off with his tail between his legs and those big sad eyes that seem to say “Nobody loves me.”

And there is fighting over me.  They both want to sit with me, which apparently is against some sort of law in the pet book.  At one point Tiberius sat next to me, looked at the dog who was across the room, and firmly planted one foot on top of my foot as if to say “Look, I’m touching her and you’re  not…”

Neo being stubborn and jealous of the cat will wedge himself in alongside me on the couch, with his back to Tiberius and his tail is literally smacking the crap out of him.  Tiberius thinks it’s a toy, but he’s not quite sure he’s ready to touch that dog.  While it is getting better, as in they can almost sit on the same piece of furniture, they’re not exactly buddies.

Dog meets cat. Dog likes cat. Cat does not care for dog.

So instead of getting along as we had hoped,  the dog eats the kitten food and the kitten’s poop.  Now the kitty is taking matters into his own hands and is trying to eat the dog’s food. This was quite amusing, considering the dog food bowl is bigger than he is!

It’s seriously almost as funny as the time I caught Rogue playing with a mouse under the bed.  Normally she does not play.  As a matter of fact, she does not even want us to THINK that she plays.  One day I walked into the bedroom and caught her, paw out to bat at a catnip mousie.  She saw me, froze, and very slowly pulled her paw back.  “You never saw that.”

Speaking of, what does the antisocial kitty think of the kitten?

I hate you all so much right now…

Do you have members of both species at your house?  Do they get along or do they want to kill each other in the middle of the night?  I’d love to hear all about it.  I’d also love to think that there is hope that these two might actually like each other someday!

I wrote about dogs and cats for Theme Thursday back at the beginning of the year, chronicling the whole phenomenon in our house…  The link to that is HERE.

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