Saturday, December 17, 2016

What makes a cat a thief? Stealing or just sharing?

Dear George,

Tell me one thing: why is it OK for a squirrel to jump on the table on my patio and steal my food and things (as you can see in the photo attached) but isn’t OK for me to jump on the kitchen table to check (and share) my humans’ dinner?

Why my humans will find the squirrel amusing and quite entertaining to watch but would get upset with me being on the dinner table? Why would they call me a thief?

I’m not stealing anything….I’m only sharing dinner with them.

Actually, what make a cat to be a thief?

In the spirit of sharing

CAT Victoria

Dear Victoria,
Sharing your human's dinner? Finding an extra snack on the kitchen counter? Investigating a half open kitchen cupboard?  This is not theft. It is natural behaviour in our own home.
Humans have ridiculous ideas about ownership which they expect us to share. Feline morality is very different. It's finders keepers; what we find is ours. Yes, we do bring food for our kittens and sometimes we even bring a mouse as a present to our humans. But, on the whole, what ours is ours, and what is theirs' is also ours. "Thine's mine and mine's my own," as the famous Yorkshire cat proverb puts it.
My friend, Tommy, is becoming an excellent forager. Here is a photo of him investigating a kitchen cupboard! He has volunteered to do my Christmas message next week.
Happy Christmas, Victoria CAT. And thank you for your letters during the year.
George.

5 comments:

  1. Sometimes, it is hard to be cat living with humans. So many rules... Drusilla is a polite girl and would not touch most human food, but vanilla ice cream- well, that is a different thing. It has is own rules.

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  2. Humans! Humans are calling us thieves but they are the thieves! Some would steal anything and everything from food, money, jewelry to intellectual property like the one (or ones) that steal and copy George's blog without permission. They even posted my letter and I surely didn't give them permission! Their morals and ethics are so low that I honestly don't know if we, the cats, have the slightest chance to re-educate and guide them on the right path.
    Beau

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  3. Yes, you are right Beau! I've seen someone brought it to George's and Celia's attention last week. I checked myself the other post! Well, I won't say anything because it's almost Christmas and I don't want to spoil my holiday spirit addressing or thinking of such low quality humans. Thanks God mine are no thieves! Merry Christmas to all the cats and their good humans :-)
    Thea

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  4. It looks like Tommy developed into a beautiful and fine kitten!
    Kudos to Celia (is he still in rehab with her?):-)
    Diego

    ReplyDelete
  5. CAT Victoria...if you are a thief...than you are a very cute one :-)
    Tom

    ReplyDelete

Help for cats whose humans show behaviour problems.

This blog is devoted to the study of human behaviour. We cats, who live with this sometimes unpredictable and always feeble minded species, can benefit from seeing their behaviour in its proper scientific context. The study of feline dilemmas, training problems, and difficulties with humans, can only benefit all of us. All of us train our humans - to buy the right food, for instance, but many of us do not have knowledge of how to improve our training methods. The human species is obviously not as intelligent as the cat, but nevertheless can learn quite a lot - if properly managed. Topics of interest include the use of claw and order, purring as a human reward, rubbing your human up the right way, when to bite, spraying as a method of making our wishes known, ignoring the human, human harassment, human inattention and sheer human stupidity. I welcome your questions. Photos can be sent via my secretary's website, www.celiahaddon.com This blog has been chosen as one of the top 50 feline blogs by Online VetTechprogramms.org