Man Meets Dog by Lorenz Konrad

Author:Lorenz, Konrad
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2005-12-04T16:00:00+00:00

After the death of Thomas I, it was many years before I was again able to watch a cat performing ‘buffalo-killing movements’ in play. This time the ‘lion’ was a large silver-tabby tom-cat, a close friend of my one-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Dagmar. The cat, which was temperamental and anything but placid, would put up with a lot from the child, letting her carry him round continually although he was nearly as large as herself and his beautiful black and silver ringed tail always trailed along the ground where, sooner or later, it was trodden on by Dagmar who promptly stumbled over it and fell on him. It was certainly to his credit that even then he still did not bite or scratch. However he exacted reprisals by requiring Dagmar to act as buffalo and it was thrilling to watch him ambush her, then pounce on her, clutching her tightly and fastening his teeth into some part of her body. But of course it was never in earnest. The child would then yell but likewise never in earnest. My theory that these movements are a relic of former hunting habits is further corroborated by the fact that they are thus preceded in play by a highly realistic lying-in-wait and stalking process.

Bully and Thomas rejoiced in a friendship which far surpassed the mutual tolerance commonly shown by dogs and cats which inhabit the same house, and their affection proved its stability on the occasions when they met out of doors. They then greeted each other, the cat with the lip sounds I have described and the dog with a friendly tail-wag. It does not necessarily follow that dogs which are friendly to cats in the house will be the same outside. In my room, our present dogs have no objections to our somewhat lethargic cat, and indeed Susi plays with her quite charmingly, nor does the cat show any fear of the dogs and even steals their food and plays ‘mouse’ with the tips of their tails—she is not vivacious enough for the buffalo-killing game. In other rooms, however, she is much more wary and generally avoids the dogs, at the most tantalizing them from beneath a low piece of furniture or from the top of a high one, but she carefully avoids being chased. Out of doors, her conduct again alters: she evinces definite fear of the dogs and quite justifiably, for Wolf. shows unmistakable signs of wanting a cat hunt. Even more strained were the relations between Stasi and Dagmar’s wild silver-tabby tom-cat. In the house, she ignored him completely but outside she hunted him so assiduously that when one day he disappeared altogether, I rather had my suspicions of Stasi.

The difficulty of placing under control his strong desires to hunt different animals with whom he may be obliged to share a house varies in the dog according to the species of animal with which he is confronted. It is quite easy to teach even the most inveterate hunter not to

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.