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27 October 2006

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.
If my cats could read, I'd show them this story and I'm sure they'd tip a 40 to Roadie's memory.
posted by birdherder 27 October | 21:22
Damn, you really know how to tell a story! What a cat. I cried.
posted by iconomy 27 October | 21:32
Awesome cat. RIP Roadie.
posted by arse_hat 27 October | 23:25
Wotta tale — that Roadie sounds like one Great Bane!
posted by rob511 27 October | 23:55
A well-told tale of a noble cat.

Pardon me for coat-tailing, but Suki's story is worth telling, too.

My Mom's cat Suki was a chocolate-point Siamese and an exemplar of breed stereotype: loud; preening; irascible; and utterly devoted to her Person, in this case, Mom.

I was ten or eleven and sitting on the front steps of my house one afternoon after school. My Mom had gone next door for some Mom-reason, and I was idly awaiting her return and flicking little purple berries off the srpouting monkeygrass onto the brick wall by the door, where they splattered to delightful effect.

The neighbors that Mom was visiting had a matched set of Doberman pinschers, known for prowling at night and upsetting garbage cans and being a general nuisance.

I heard an explosion of barking and I saw my Mom, cradling a Tupperware cake carrier like a fireman porting a baby through a blaze, pursued by a barking Dobie. At almost the same instant, I heard something hit the door behind me. I opened the door and a cream-and-brown streak blurred past and seemed to LEVITATE down the ten or so sizeable steps on our porch and onto that dog's head. I stood stunned and Mom (still clutching the cake) turned around to see Suki RIDING that Doberman around our yard, hind claws securely hooked into skin behind the dog's shoulders and front paws a spiky blur whipping at its eyes.

The dog's yelps were heart-rending. After a couple of panicked cirucits around the yard, the dog managed to shake Suki into a magnolia tree, to which she stuck like Spider-Man, still hissing and spitting.

That solved the neighborhood Doberman problem, and they didn't even sue us when the dog lost an eye.

Suki died at the ripe old age of 16, after a lifetime of complaining about everything, but for one shining moment, she lived every cat's dream.
posted by BitterOldPunk 28 October | 01:57
Yeah, what a cat.
posted by essexjan 28 October | 03:26
What a great cat - I hope she is up there chasing winged pitbulls around even now.
posted by greycap 28 October | 05:42
Awesome tales of ferocious felinity! Thrill to the Orange Blur and the Siamese Dream as they take on the baddest mutts in Centerville! Blam! Pow! Zowie!
posted by Lipstick Thespian 28 October | 08:22
If Suki and Roadie find each other in their next lives, dogs had best beware.
posted by mischief 28 October | 09:57
There's nothing better than a good cat. Except maybe two of them.

Extra treats and head skritches tonight to my three, in honour of Roadie and Suki.
posted by hangashore 28 October | 10:22
I've seen a cat do a similar thing. I didn't know this cat - my brother, dad and I where hanging out at one of my dad's friends place. Said friend of my dad was - for lack of a better term - an urban, no-class redneck with a penchant for cheap beer, motorcycles, etc. Oh, and pitbulls. Go figure.

Now, these pitbulls were pretty damn good. They tolerated us kids crawling all over 'em, riding on 'em and otherwise pestering them.

But they hated cats. They hated the word "cat". If you even spelled the world "cat" out verbally - "C-A-T" they would go nuts trying to figure out where the cat was.

One afternoon one of the pitbulls chased a neighbor's cat into the living room, knocking stuff over, wrecking the joint, etc.

It cornered the cat. I figured the cat's unavoidable doom was just around the corner.

The cat proceeded to tap-dance all over the pitbull's face. For about 2-3 minutes. Every time the cat came down it just tore into the pitbull like some kind of insane razor-wielding ninjacat, and then lept back up in the air, off the wall, and back down on the pitbull's face. Repeat.

That pitbull got messed right the fuck up. Cubesteak. Dog food. I remember getting sick just looking at the poor thing. They ended up having to take the dog to the vet for dozens of stitches.

I don't think it ever stopped chasing cats, though. Dogs can be so dumb.
posted by loquacious 28 October | 10:28
The killer instinct of a predator is not to be underestimated. Big and brawny versus fast and agile is an unpredictable outcome.
posted by mischief 28 October | 11:36
Wow, those are great stories. I'm off outside to see if next door's cat has been left out for the night again...
posted by TheDonF 28 October | 13:06
Man, I am so glad my cats and dog get along.
posted by pickles 28 October | 13:16
Wow, these are great. I am in awe.

They have good company.
posted by redvixen 28 October | 17:52
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