Tethered

Lest I bore my faithful readers with too many entries about Miles, please allow me to thrill you with a tale of my pets, Scout (the cowardly dog) and Jem (the crazy cat).

Scout loves to be outside, especially when there is some warm sunshine to bask in. Sadly, we do not have a proper backyard for her to enjoy unattended. She’s pretty good about staying near the house, but if there is bird or a stray cat at our neighbor’s house, she takes off. So when she’s driving me crazy, and it’s warm enough outside, I hook her up to her tie-out. She does this:

Jem, however, jealously sits at the back door.Remember, this cat came to our family as a stray on our front doorstep and has always been an escape artist. Remember the four weeks he has disappeared over the summer?

I noticed a family a few houses up that hooks their cat on a long rope in their backyard, letting the cat just sit in the trees. I thought Jem would enjoy something like this, so I bought another rope to hook to Scout’s tie-out last week and tried it out with Jem’s collar. That didn’t go so well because his first reaction was to run as fast as he could until the collar nearly choked him or came off. Back to Petsmart I went and came home with a harness specially designed for cats. This was after a lovely sales associate told me about a large raptor of some sort that she watched fly away with a live squirrel out her back window.

At first, Jem wasn’t sure what to make of the harness, but he does let me put it on him without scratching. Our last cat would never have allowed such a violation of his civil liberties.

So while the dog was inside, I put Jem outside.

For some reason he stays very close to the ground.

After a few minutes of this, I let Scout back out. I kept telling her to “leave it,” which she did, until I turned my back, at which point, she attacked. But in a friendly way.

I don’t think a bird could stand a chance against those claws, but they don’t deter our dog.

At this point, the dog came back inside in a role-reversal.

This only lasted a few minutes though because somehow Jem managed to do this:

So now he is stuck inside with the other attacker, Miles.