An odd little story about my dog... My dog is not a cat chaser, or a cat lover, or a cat hater. She basically has no opinion about cats. →[More:]

If they are right in front of her, she's probably likely to try to check them about a bit, and I wouldn't be surprised if she was willing to be indulgent toward a friendly overture - but mostly she just ignores them. There are a lot of cats in the neighborhood, and many of them know her by sight, know she's not a threat and are just chill. Some will never be chill and they get all back-arched and glare-y, and some are cautious but optimistic.

A couple of days ago, I saw a very young kitten with its mother, and when the kitten saw Sky, her eyes got huge, and she kept looking back and forth at Sky, then at her mom, like, well? what the fuck do we do now???! That was funny.

But for the most part, the ones we see on our regular neighborhood walk don't pay much attention to her, and she never pays any attention at all to them. Until yesterday.

Yesterday we walked by a house where a young brindle cat was sitting on the doorstep. And Sky stopped dead in her tracks, and just stared and stared at this perfectly normal little cat. And the little cat just stared back. I don't think she was frightened because there were a million places she could have dashed to, but I'm not sure.

Well, this went on for quite a long time - Sky staring at the cat, the cat staring back, and me staring at both of them, utterly puzzled. But finally I tug on the leash let's go! - and Sky doesn't budge. Very unusual. So I tug a little harder and do the kissykissy sound that she pretty much never ignores... and she braces her legs and refuses to move.

So now I'm really baffled. I just look at both of them staring at each other, nobody making any kind of move to get closer or further, and I don't see anything at all to account for this behavior. Eventually, though, I kind of drag-tug Sky along, with her totally resisting the whole time, and we get to the end of the street and turn the corner... and she's turning around looking back the whole time.

I mean she never does this... no matter how utterly fascinating or tempting something is, once we get out of sight of it, it's pretty much like it never existed. But not this time. This time she's trying to turn around and go back, or else glancing backwards the whole entire time, until we get inside our gate.

Tres bizarre. Normally, I would guess that no matter how unlikely, this is a cat she has known before, but the cat is clearly too young for that. We've had Sky for eight months, and I don't think the cat is much older than that (not to mention that Sky came from a very long way away from where we live).

V. thinks the cat may look like one she was friends with in the past, but we've seen other brindle cats and she didn't act that way. And wouldn't the smell be the major signifier for a dog?

Anyway. A doggy mystery.