Cat Fight

Cats are cute cuddly soft little furballs, suitable for sitting on doilies or little velvet pillows. They are soft and helpless.

Anyone with any knowledge of cats knows that is simply not the case. We have lots of cats. There are outside cats that we feed that range from approachable to skittish, and inside cats that either spend all their time inside or like to go out when they can.

Valentine is an outside cat. She showed up last winter and has never let us pet her. She's not so scared of us that she runs at the sight of us, she's just leery and stays outside of arm's length. Last winter, there were more outside cats, and Valentine was at the very bottom of the pecking order. It seemed that none of the other cats liked her, or even tolerated her, and it seemed that she got the most abuse from the other cats. Valentine's nose would often have a huge scratch in it, and you just visualized her getting beat up by all the other cats.

If you imagine what a cat attack would look like, it would be pretty brutal. They have some seriously sharp and nasty claws. I've often wondered how bad a cat with absolutely no fear could hurt you if it suddenly went nuts and decided to attack. I would not want to find out, especially if I had shorts on. The other day, one of the inside cats, Eddy was coming into the cat door and got nailed by Valentine from behind. She was getting hit in the flank just as she ducked into the door. There was no blood and no apparent damage. The same attack would have easily killed a bird, and probably a rabbit. It makes you realize that these cute little kitties must be made of tough enough stuff to defend against attacks by themselves.

In fact, that's probably not a bad definition of most species. Their defenses are probably about evenly matched to their offensive abilities. Being as tough as it takes to survive the kind of attacks you yourself can dish out would be a prerequisite for survival.

The human political animal is the exception. It seems to me that the Republicans are made of sterner stuff than the Democrats. From what I always observe, the Republicans have a never ending supply of moves that smash any Democratic leaning or initiative. They always seem to state their opponents position and break it up and show it to be a sham before you even hear from the Democrats. It just doesn't even seem like a fair fight most of the time, except when you look at the outcome, which is government that pretty much hovers around the 50/50 point. Like my cat that gets hit in the side and waltzes in unharmed, perhaps there is more to this in the political animal than meets the eye.