Dog tries to train cat
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Wan-Wan tries to teach wild child Manohra a lesson but the message fails to get through
YEARS AGO, one of my cats bit a young man who was visiting me. It wasn’t a real bite, just a nip. It didn’t even break the skin.
The cat, I think, was just trying to be friendly. She was still very young, and perhaps she thought the young man wanted a game of cat-and-mouse.
My guest didn’t understand. Before I could explain, he stood up and chased her all over the house. At first, the cat thought the game had started, until the man cornered her and slapped her.
He then returned to his seat and said sternly, “Your cat must learn the consequence of her actions.”
My guest, at that time, was 26 or 27 years old, a foreigner who had been living in Thailand for two years. I don’t think that training a cat was in his expertise.
A person who thinks a cat or dog will learn manners by slapping them around will not be successful. Violence doesn’t teach animals the result of unacceptable behaviour; it teaches them fear.
In my household, we’ve been dealing with lots of unacceptable behaviour recently, mainly from Wild Child Manohra.
This young cat hasn’t quite learned to live peacefully with the other animals in the house, nor with me.
Rescued as a very young kitten, she never really had a mother to teach her cat ways. When she moved in with us, she was only two months old, but it was already too late.
Her biting and scratching have driven most of the other cats away, but Wan-Wan, my poodle pup, fell in love with her immediately, attracted by her high energy levels.
Now, Manohra’s aggressiveness has risen considerably. She approaches any cat and begins screaming. When her target turns to get away from the noise, she attacks, swinging a sharp claw at a retreating rear.
Within one week, she has sent two cats to the vet’s for medical treatment. The other cats tense when she enters a room.
Manohra really just wants to join the gang, but she hasn’t learned to stop being a kitten and move into adulthood.
Now she’s grown even more aggressive because of Angel. My one-eyed Siamese, as I wrote last week, is dying of kidney disease. At this stage of her illness, she requires a great deal of care, and the strain of the situation is affecting all of us.
Readers ask why I don’t simply put Angel down, end her suffering in the kindest way possible. For me, as long as she’s eating, as long as she wants to live, euthanasia is not an option. She’ll tell me when it’s time, which will not be long now, according to the vet.
This evening as I’m feeding Angel, Manohra walks into the room and decides to attack Yoyo. Awakened from his nap, the boy does his best to ignore her, but she won’t leave him alone. The terrible screaming starts as she advances towards him.
This time, though, things change. Wan, who considers herself the Cat Guardian, has grown tired of Manohra’s screaming. For the first time since the Wild Child joined us, Wan barks at her, but the kid doesn’t shut up.
Wan is Manohra’s friend, but she also has a job to do. She continues her warning barks and then rushes at Manohra, nipping at her and shoving her towards the stairs.
Since the two are the same size, there’s no danger, but you can’t stop this cat once she’s in attack mode. Wan continues to nip her, not hard, just to teach her a lesson.
Wan’s unexpected violence is useless. Manohra refuses to learn. I finally persuade her to go upstairs, but it’s going to take a long, long time before she learns the consequences of her actions.
