My Son Thinks He’s a Cat (And My Cat Thinks He’s a Dog!)

Ok, I know that sounds a bit odd. But let me give you some background to our cat extended family.

Harun is our orange cat. He’s been with us since birth and has never known the harsh life of a stray. Thomas, the darker coloured cat, was a stray that found his way into our home (and our hearts!).

They got along really, really well and were not a threat to each other at all, which was strange as they are both male cats (yes, they have both been neutered). Anyway, we decided to call him Thomas because he bore an uncanny resemblance to our previous cat, Tom.

Thomas, the ex-stray cat, chows down his IAMS like there’s no tomorrow. I guess stray cats not only have to go looking for their own food, there’s no telling when they’ll have their next good meal. (Lizards, cockroaches, rats and grasshoppers are more like snacks and not what they’d consider a “good meal”.) So, when a bowl of IAMS is staring at you in the face, chow down! And if you can, grab your friend’s too!

While Harun is quite an active cat, Thomas is more sedate. In fact, a couple of times we saw Thomas scarfing down his lunch and then throwing up. Great. A bulimic ex-stray cat. Just what we need.

Both Harun and Thomas like to sharpen their claws on our mango tree. And one fine day, I caught Abang doing it!

“Mummy, look. I do like Harun.” Scratch, scratch, scratch on the mango tree.

Hmmm. “Um ... Abang, what ARE you doing?”

“I do like Haruuuun,” he replied impatiently, scratching away, wondering why his mummy can’t see the obvious – that he’s just doing what normal cats do. Luckily he hasn’t tried to use the litter box.

Then there’s Harun who comes over when we call him. Honest! It’s almost dog-like. And he’d run up and down the garden with us and sprints from one end of the garden to the other. If we had a Frisbee, I wonder if he’d retrieve it for us after we toss it.

Not just that – whenever we come home and he’s at the front door, while we’re trying to unlock the door he stands up on his hind legs and rests his front paws on our leg. The claws don’t come out, so it’s nice for us, but he has no ‘grip’ and so after a few seconds he kinda slides down our leg. The only thing he doesn’t do is wag his tail.

So we have a boy who thinks he’s a cat, a cat that behaves like a dog and another cat that’s bulimic (but by no stretch of the imagination would anyone think he’s anorexic). Identity crisis looms in our household!