Max Gets Barked At

Circle Tail is a quiet dog. In fact, before last Saturday night, I'd never heard him bark. You may remember that Circle Tail is my brother's dog. Max has gotten fairly comfortable with having him around.

We were playing a board game, and not paying much attention to the animals. Circle Tail's food and water dishes are in the same room. They're in one of those elevated platform things that you can get so your large dog (or large cat, in some cases) doesn't have to reach down to the floor to eat. It helps ease stress on their neck muscles and bones.

When the other cats investigate Circle Tail's food dish, they are so small that their elbows stick up around their ears as they lean into the bowl, front feet on the edge. It looks like little fuzzy wings. One wants to go over and tweak them. (One is usually not quick enough.)

Max just kind of leans over and looks in. I don't think he was actually eating. Perhaps tasting, and just in general being a nosy cat.

Circle Tail knows he's not supposed to bother the cats, but this was really the end. I mean, just too much. He was whining, at first silently, and then louder, hoping to get one of his people to make Max go away so he could eat.

Like I said, we weren't paying attention.

So Circle Tail (much to our surprise and possibly his) let out a short sharp bark. Max backs off from the food dish, which was what the poor dog wanted in the first place, so Circle Tail moves up toward the food. This meant, since Max hadn't backed far, that from Max's point of view, the dog was coming toward him.

Oh dear no, we can't have this. (After the bark we were all watching to see how they'd handle the situation.) Max backed up another step, one front paw out and up, ready to give Circle Tail the smack down if necessary.Circle Tail hesitated, and that was all Max needed to get out of there; he put the paw down and turned and walked off in a little more haste than is normal for him.

For all the world like Max had been saying, "Don't you talk to me in that  tone of voice, mister -- and I'm leaving, I'm leaving, sheesh, you needn't bark."

By the way, when I say Max backed up, I mean it. Due to his Norwegian Forest cat heritage, Max is capable of backing up multiple steps using all four feet. He's also capable of walking down the cat tree (instead of jumping from it). It is fairly startling to watch, as it looks so normal -- until you think about it and realize you've never seen a cat do that before!

Max on high