I was lying in bed this afternoon taking a nap when I hear Scout and Kevin go outside to the backyard. Suddenly there was this cacophony of noise. Scout was howling in a high pitched voice. She was baying! She rarely does that! I thought she was in pain or being attacked (and couldn't believe that Kevin wasn't doing anything about it) so I ran outside in my t-shirt and underwear (fortunately we have a privacy fence). By the time I got there, it was all over. Scout was looking intently up a tree with her paws stretched as high as they could go. Apparently she'd treed a cat and was calling for the rest of the pack (and the hunter--Dad, shoot it! Shoot it!). She's usually very placid, if not intimidated, around cats, and there are several who live in our neighborhood and climb into our yard. This is the first time I can ever remember her going after a cat with full voice. You go, brave little dog!
Speaking of neighborhood cats, one of them took revenge on the neighbors we don't like. Our daycare neighbors, of course. The other neighbors are as nice as can be. For the first 9 months or so that we lived here, the neighbors had an immoveable minivan parked in the street space in front of their house. This, of course, prevented them from parking in front of their own house with their giant Suburban, so they constantly parked it in front of our house forcing Kevin to park elsewhere on the street after work. Nice, hunh?
Well, some very convenient vandals took care of that problem. They smashed in the side windows of the minivan on the side facing the house. Suddenly there's room enough to park it in the driveway! Amazing! So now it's there windowless, and the giant Suburban is parked in front of their house, as it should be.
Even better, Kevin caught the organge cat (a regular fixture in our yard) about to hop into the van's windows. Apparently it's been sleeping in there. Awwww, how cuuuute! Looks like the neighbor realized it too because all of a sudden there are trash bags taped over the windows. Oh well. I get great personal satisfaction for the amount of time the cat did spend in there.
The neighbors are so strange too. Now that the van has moved to their driveway they are compulsive about washing it. Mind you they hadn't touched it in 9 months, to move or to wash it at all. But now they wash the thing weekly. And yes, they just let the water and soap dribble in through the open windows. How bizarre.
Posted by Shelby at September 28, 2003 09:18 PMWhat happened to the treed kitty? Hopefully he/she got down ok.
Neighbors... it seems that every neighborhood has at least one strange or annoying set of neighbors.
Posted by: suzi at September 28, 2003 10:30 PMOh the cat was just fine. She hopped easily from the tree to our garage to a neighbor's garage, which is how she gets in in the first place.
Posted by: Shelby at September 29, 2003 12:35 PMWhat a brave Grandogger! I could use her down here.
Pop
This was the first time that I'd ever seen Scout go into full hunting-dog mode, and I have to say that it was SERIOUSLY COOL. Watching our ordinarily laid-back little dog, who *never* howls, baying at the top of her lungs while standing on her two hind legs and maintaining *absolute focus* on that treed cat was like discovering that your dear great-aunt with the crocheted doilies, who always serves you crustless watercress sandwiches on bone china, moonlights as a contract assasin for the CIA.
Only without quite so much malice.
Hopefully that cat learned his lesson, but I doubt it. Our neighborhood cats aren't anything if they aren't stupidly persistent.
Posted by: Kevin at September 30, 2003 06:24 PMAnd if you're wondering just what 'baying' sounds like:
http://www.beaglesunlimited.net/Barking.wav
Posted by: Kevin at September 30, 2003 06:26 PM