CatDonna's Cats

This is Rusty, my dog. I lived with him until I got married and moved out. Nowadays I visit a couple times a week.

Rusty came to us when he was 11 months old; his previous owner had to give him up due to personal problems. Rusty is now 7 years old and still as puppylike as before.

Rusty is a standard bull terrier and about 24 kg of solid muscle. Most times he's lovely and friendly and affectionate. Most times. He has his moments, though.

Why a dog pic on a cat blog? Well, I was messing around and idly skimming through an old blog that I used to contribute to. Then I came across this post [reproduced below], and decided that since there's a strange moral to the story... I'll risk it.

I am SO gonna get lynched for this.

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Friday, November 19, 2004
[Some details edited for privacy]

#6: I still love Rusty

Because I was suffering from stress-induced gastritis and diarrhoea, I decided to relax by taking my mild and lovely bull terrier Rusty for a run.

Rusty and I like to run at night. Right now the jasmine trees are in bloom and when we run past, we smell the sweet heavy scent of jasmine in the cool night breeze.

Tonight didn't seem any different. We were turning back home happily. Then we ran down this quiet back road and I heard hissing in the dark. An unneutered community tomcat was surprised by our sudden appearance (we'd turned a corner rather quickly) and arched its back angrily, seething. I managed to grab an over-excited Rusty and pull away in time.

But the tomcat, being a typical territorial male, decided that he would teach the intruders a lesson and lunged straight for Rusty's face, roaring.

This was a fatal mistake. I read somewhere that bull terriers have an average bite strength of several hundred pounds per square inch. Rusty happily obliged and partially ripped the cat's stomach out at first bite. The stupid cat still kept struggling and Rusty's second bite connected at the neck. End of cat.

During this highly uneven fight which lasted all of about 30 seconds, I stood aside feeling extremely sad for the cat and embarrassed for ourselves. Vet's orders. "The kindest thing you can do for a bull terrier victim is to let your dog kill it quickly."

Finally I managed to untangle Rusty from murdered cat #6. Yes, #6. It was extremely difficult because Rusty is very possessive of his toys. At one point he got so excited he kept swinging the corpse at me. So now I was covered with cat blood, catshit and the indescribably awful catstink.

I left the body on the pavement, dragged a hysterical Rusty across the road, and we turned to watch the scene. Another cat had come out and was crouching near the corpse, gingerly touching it with a paw. "You okay buddy?" Just like a human. Very sad. It looked terrified.

We ran home all the way. No more pit stops for Rusty the public menace to pee, poo, sniff strange things, be hostile to other species etc. Tonight we ran past the blossoming jasmine trees but all I could smell was this nauseating musky mix of cat blood, urine, shit and civet (anal gland oil, aka the famous catstink). All over Rusty. And all over myself.

The rest of tonight was spent washing myself and Rusty with Dettol. But no matter how much I wash, I can still smell dead cat on me.

Needless to say, tonight's run did not achieve its objective of helping me relax.

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Thankfully, #6 was Rusty's last kill [as far as I know].

Re-reading this rather horrifying kitty horror story, I thought about my role in TNRM for my residential estate.

Currently I'm not actively involved because of my irregular schedule; also because I think there's already another feeder here [I'm in a private estate, which is relatively small and doesn't have all that many cats]. I've only seen her once, this plump little old lady, on the rare occasion when I got home at 8 pm.

The cats here generally look healthy, but I haven't seen any tipped ears. And that bothers me.

Besides the obvious points, that I shan't go into, I have these two morals to point out from the story:

1. 5 out of Rusty's 6 victims were UNNEUTERED TOMS. Them hormones make kitties do crazy strange things. I'm not trying to defend Rusty here, but all of them either attacked him first, or refused to run when he charged at them.
2. The one kitty victim that wasn't an unneutered tom was a neighbour's indoor-and-outdoor cat. Irony of ironies, this neighbour is a vet - proof that even with a vet degree you can still be STUPID AS DANG when it comes to animals. There have been other incidents, too, when this vet neighbour showed little concern for her pets' welfare [I'll always remember her rottweiler that died of cancer; it spent its last weeks wailing all alone in the backyard]. I am definitely not taking my animals to her.

Okay fine the second "moral" was irrelevant, I just wanted to point out that cats should be indoor pets entirely and sometimes even vets are dumb. But back to the first point. It's got me thinking... time to get a cat trap and sterilise, sterilise, sterilise.

CatDonna

PS - To pre-empt all the online war-cries of "MUZZLE your bloodthirsty bull beast in public, you hypocritical cat murderess!!!111", I have this to say: I choose not to muzzle my dog because he is well-trained and well-socialised, would never hurt a human voluntarily, and would actually suffer while wearing a muzzle. He really can't breathe in them; you need to remember his head and jaw are larger than most dogs'.

Unfortunately his prey drive was well-developed by the time he came to us, and try as I might I've never been successful in rehabilitating Rusty.

Look at it this way: I love animals, those incidents haunted me terribly and, in the mysterious ways of divine justice, I now volunteer with cat rescue and adoption too. I mean, would any bull terrier owner have known that one day she will live with nine cats and help even more?