Chris Pascoe’s Fun Tales

Chris’s unintentional intervention causes a dog owner in hedge incident

Who’s more intelligent, dogs or cats? I imagine dog owners will now be smiling happily and mumbling “dogs, of course” while cat owners will develop a deep frown and almost spit the word “cats”.

And I suppose there lies the difference – without wanting to stereotype, because each and every cat and dog can be very much their own person – it seems to me that dogs’ intelligence generally leads to happy, constructive and sometimes incredibly helpful things as in guide dogs, while cats’ intelligence leads to something quite different, as in death and destruction. But, I’ve seen very good opposite examples of both just recently.

Take Tweak for instance, the helpful talking cat. Tweak is a tiny bundle of ginger energy, shouting commands at me in strangely squeaky meows the moment I walk into his house. His squeaks definitely have different meanings. The question “Do you want a load of food?” will always receive a massive “yeeee-esss” squeak, whereas “Stop tearing the baubles off that Christmas tree right now!” generates a short sharp “Nah”.

He’s helpful in a way that no other cat I know ever is. Tweak’s brother, Stan, is a hider, and finding him, especially in a house now full

I hadn’t noticed a man walking an Alsatian right outside my gate. The dog went into fetch mode

of packages heaped in preparation for Christmas, is nigh-on impossible.

Normal etiquette is that co-residing cats never reveal a comrade’s whereabouts, but Tweak is an exception. The simple words “where’s Stan?” will have Tweak running straight at his brother’s hideout with a high-decibel shriek. He shows me where his food’s kept in the same way, even though I never actually asked.

So, then – a helpful cat; now on to a dog opposite.

Stepping out of my front door the other day, I was about to put half a French stick into the food bin, when I decided I should probably gift it to the birds, so threw it across the road, as far from the house as possible so our homicidal tomcat Bodmin wouldn’t eat whatever was eating it.

Two things went wrong at this point. Firstly, I didn’t actually mean to throw it right over the hedge opposite. Secondly, I hadn’t noticed a man walking an Alsatian right outside my gate.

That dog took one look at the French stick flying across the road and went into instant Fetch mode, wrenching the unsuspecting walker on the end of his lead into the road, before jumping the hedge in one bound and dragging his owner straight through the middle of it. That wasn’t very helpful, was it?

I thought about backing through my door and closing it quietly, but that would have made the bread-throwing seem even more randomly malicious, so I ran across the road yelling my apologies. Thankfully there wasn’t much damage, just some scratches and a lot of foliage.

OK, with hindsight, not really the dog’s fault, was it? And I’ve just answered my own opening question – cats and dogs are both intelligent, while I… am definitely not.

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