A Cat Tale (violent content) →[More:]

My ex and I once had a lean, petite female orange tabby (much like the linked pic), unspayed and named Roadie (after the Meatloaf movie), who ambushed dogs.

She would lay in wait on an outside stairwell. When an unleashed dog wandered by, she jumped its back from behind and just went claw crazy while doing that inimitable cat-fight scream. She then retreated up to the balcony before the surprised dog could react and defend itself. She took particular pleasure in harassing the beagle that lived in the house next door, but I know of a shepherd and a retriever who also met her wrath.

One day, three pit bulls, young but no longer puppies, escaped from the crack dealers' house on the corner. Venom, our gray tabby and also an outside cat, was sunning herself in the front yard under the pecan tree. (Our other cats at the time were Punk, a male orange tabby with a deformed ear, and Chainsaw, a male siamese who purred damn near as loud as I snore.)

The pit bulls caught Venom off-guard, but before they could do any real damage, Roadie streaked out from under the stoop, shrieking and right into the middle of that ravaging dog pack. With the distraction, Venom climbed the tree.

Although I witnessed the whole event, I had nothing to hand with which to defend Roadie from three very mean, snarling, drueling and already bleeding mad pit bulls. I could only hope Roadie could hold her own until the cops arrived.

Those dogs tried every instinctive pack attack but none of them could get any real advantage on the yellow blur of lightning. Although Roadie had a couple obvious opportunities to escape up the tree, she instead shredded eyelids, underbellies and gonads.

The fight lasted twenty minutes before exhaustion got the better of the courageous, little furball. One dog bit down behind Roadie's head and shook her, hard. Roadie caught her second wind and raked the dog's chest repeatedly with her hind claws before her spine finally snapped. The dogs then tore her to pieces.

A moment later the cops pulled into the driveway. Two pit bulls lay in our front yard, bleeding profusely. The last dog was limping away, one front leg useless, and it fell on its chops every few feet.

The cops had called Animal Control, but one dog bled to death before the white truck appeared. The dogcatcher determined the other dog, barely conscious, was too hurt to save, and she put the dog down on the spot with an injection.

The third dog was laying on its home front porch when the AC tech shot it with a tranquilizer gun and snared it in a chain link restraining net. The court order to put down this dog as well came two days later.

As for the drug dealers, they were never seen again, and the two remaining litter mates still in the house had been lured out and captured.

Roadie was one hell of a cat. She was small enough to sit comfortably on my shoulder, and she had a soft, barely audible purr. My ex and I could not recall any time when Roadie had scratched either of us (although she did once crash a stereo speaker onto the floor), and she was always friendly toward our guests, laying in their laps as she washed her face.

We don't know where Roadie got her mean streak, but she lived her short life her way, and we can only presume that in saving Venom, she went out with a warrior's pride.