Ferocious felines, rapist roosters and canines in combat

Once bitten, twice shy. The aphorism applies to my brother’s cat Flow whose disposition drastically changed after being viciously attacked by a stray. And who can blame him? His tail was almost bitten off! After a reconstructive operation that required general anesthesia, Flow was on massive doses of oral and topical antibiotics for weeks.

To add to the misery, there was the cone collar to prevent him from licking the wound. It was so obvious that the cat hated the contraption. He would turn teary-eyed each time we put it on him, and would sit dejectedly in the farthest corner of the couch. The poor guy wouldn’t even budge for his favorite can of Fancy Feast, and we could only coax him to eat with cans of Critical Care cat food that came close to a hundred bucks a pop. Worse, the veterinarian told us that tail’s condition was so bad that it might still have to be amputated in spite of all the care. It took several anxious weeks until his wound fully healed.

While Flow was previously a generally friendly cat who touched noses with the strays that were fed in the garage, he now growls and hisses at them, even occasionally rushing angrily to try to claw and bite. It has come to a point where we have to wash and perfume our hands after touching the strays, or else our cat will surely misbehave and urinate in places other than his litter box. This, we feel, is his way of expressing disapproval, his way of punishing us for being too friendly with the interlopers.

Fortunately, we got Thumper, an orange bob-tailed kitten picked up from the streets. Despite coming to us with injured footpads burned from hot asphalt from when the workers were paving our village roads, the little fellow was bright, lively and had a permanently sunny disposition. He eventually wormed his way into Flow’s good graces so that they are now fast friends. The strange thing, however, is that Thumper seems to have been infected with Flow’s extreme bias against the strays. Together, the duo hiss, claw and attempt to attack the outsiders.

In her book Animals in Translation, Temple Grandin, the bestselling author, professor and doctor of animal science at Colorado State University, says that animals, like people, are capable of having best friends.

Cat pals Flow and Thumper: In league against the neighborhood strays.

”We know animals and humans share the same core feelings,” she writes. “The main difference between animal emotions and human emotions is that animals don’t have mixed emotions the way normal people do. Animals aren’t ambivalent; they don’t have love-hate relationships with each other or with people.”

Our cats are best friends and there is no doubt about that. But we wonder: Can animals influence their companions to share the same prejudices? What can we do to make them friendlier towards the other animals?

For surely, it cannot be denied that human intervention can influence animal behavior. Unfortunately this sometimes comes with negative results. In her book, Grandin talks about “rapist roosters” who also killed hens. Why did they do it? They were the accidental result of a breeding program that hastened development so that chickens could find their way to our dinner tables faster.

What the experts found was that “the rooster courtship program had gotten accidentally deleted in about half of the birds. A normal rooster does a little courtship dance before trying to mate with a hen. The dance triggers a fixed action pattern in the hen’s brain, and she crouches down in a sexually receptive position so the rooster can mount her.” Ergo, since all memory of the courtship dance had been obliterated from the rooster’s brain, there was no trigger for the hen to crouch. The rooster had to force himself on her to mate, and sometimes she died in the process.

But human intervention can result in positive changes in our animals, too. A much-loved pet can fully empathize with his human and is capable of surprising displays of affection. When my brother Enrico was sick, for example, Flow was constantly at his bedside — leaving only to quickly eat and use the litter box.

Through the years and throughout the legions of pets that have enriched our lives, we have realized that affection changes our animals as they have changed us. What comes to mind is an incident years ago where our biggest, most muscular alpha dogs Superbus and Klafloosh got into a dominance-asserting brawl. It seemed like a battle-to-the-death where the two canine aggressors ignored the shouting humans and our houseboy who tried to separate them with a strong spray of water from a pressure hose.

Against our collective protests, my mom (a diminutive 4”10’ woman) suddenly jumped between the two clashing dogs, attempting to physically pull them apart. Of course, she was accidentally bitten in the process and let out a loud howl of pain. The result was shocking and instantaneous. The two canine combatants promptly pulled apart, tucked their tails between their legs and looked shamefacedly at her. They both tried to make amends by trying (unsuccessfully) to lick the small wound in her hand. Many times afterwards when they threatened to fight, all it took was for Mom to shout at them to stop. And they did. Thereafter, our two baddest dogs glared at each other instead.