43 thoughts on “The way it should be”

  2. My sister had an elderly dog who tended to get confused. Toward the end of his life, the family cat always accompanied him on his neighborhood walks without humans or a leash; as near as we could tell, just to watch after him.

      1. Hmm, when I was working in Israel (well, off the coast, but …) I heard more Russian than I did Hebrew. Mind you, I speak a little Russian and can understand more, so it impinges on my attention rather more than Hebrew does.
        So surely writing in Hebrew makes it more likely that the poster is in … New York ?

        1. On the video I can hear birds & no cars
          The stairwell lacks graffiti & the tell tale black blobs of spent chewing gum
          The stair furniture is cast iron & has a curly decorative motif to it ending in a spike where a child’s head might poke between the balusters ~ not considered safe in the land of the gun [USA] 🙂

          I just *researched* your language comment ~ i.e. looked on Wiki & I was surprised

          Israeli peoples’ first language:-
          Hebrew is spoken by around 5 Million people mostly in Israel
          The next most common 1st language is Arabic
          However around 1 million Israelis do indeed speak Russian & 700,000 French!
          The most common second language is English due to TV

          1. The next most common 1st language is Arabic
            However around 1 million Israelis do indeed speak Russian & 700,000 French!

            My wife, who is Russian, has a couple of friends who have emigrated to Israel on the basis of some slight traces of Jewish blood (and absolutely no acculturation). So, if she’s typical, then […] thinks […] a million Russian-speakers in Israel would lead to an estimate of the size of my wife’s “circle” at around a hundred people. Which sounds right, to an order of magnitude.
            That secular population is going to make politics in Israel “interesting”.

          2. “Interesting” in the Magnum P.I. or Chinese sense no doubt 🙂

            According to slick Willy Clinton back in 2010:- “An increasing number of the young people in the IDF are the children of Russians and settlers, the hardest-core people against a division of the land. This presents a staggering problem ~ It’s a different Israel. 16 percent of Israelis speak Russian.” I have no idea how accurate his assessment is.

            But THIS VERY interesting article on how Russian Jews are reshaping Israel supports that view. I wonder if you were near the port city of Ashdod AKA “Little Moscow”?

          3. I was working off the coast of Haifa, but the Israeli members of the crew were from all over. When onshore travelling and doing papaerwork, I was in Herzliya, which was where I got my ideas of Israeli “street life”.
            Oh ye ghods, I’d forgotten about this next bit. When we were being taxied from Haifa to Herzliya, the taxi stopped off in some ghods-foresaken industrial estate to drop off a package from some other client. And I double-taked on the company name, because they were a well-known “oil company” whose literal stock in trade is drilling for oil and gas following “hints” in the bible. I’ve forgotten their name, but it’ll come back to me.
            Anyway, I’d heard of them long ago – they’ve been ripping off customers for a decade or so. And of course, in comes a non-ghod-squad oil company applying normal science … and Israel gets it’s first significant hydrocarbon resources.
            Zion Oil, that’s the source of amusement’s name. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Zion_Oil_and_Gas
            Actually, they’re not the most wildly insane people in the game. But since this is the oil and gas game, they’re up against some pretty stiff competition in the “wildly insane” stakes.

          4. Russian immigration did have a very strong influence on Israel, as you can expect (1 million people in a 7 million people country!).
            Apart from other influences, they did make Israeli society more secular, and the secular community more open and unapologetic about their secularism. They’re pretty much the reason Israelis can go grocery shopping on Saturday, and get non-kosher food almost everywhere. That was not the case before the 90s.

          5. And from the comments I’ve just posted, you’ll know why I know the name “Tamar”. Some biblical bint, as I recall, but also Israel’s first decent-sized hydrocarbon discovery.

        2. Also I’ve found this on ABC news:-

          Cats and dogs don’t always get along, but Pemba and Ruti have a different kind of relationship.

          The video uploaded to YouTube by Dafna Kopelis of Tel Aviv shows her pets’ unusual interaction on the street. Ruti the cat can be seen leading Pemba the Jack Russell terrier home by his leash. The clip, which is just under a minute long, starts with the cat using her mouth to pick up the leash that’s connected to Pemba’s collar. Ruti tugs, Pemba obediently follows.

          The dog gets distracted midwalk and stops to smell the ground, but the cat won’t allow it. She gives a stern meow and another strong tug, and the dog quickly falls in line, trotting behind her and up two flights of stairs, heading home.

          Kopelis shot the video last week and uploaded it to YouTube on Saturday. As of Wednesday, it had been viewed more than 500,000 times.

          She explained that she had taken her baby and her pets for their customary morning walk. She dropped the dog’s leash briefly to pick up her baby, and that’s when the cat picked up the leash. Kopelis took out her phone and began to record. She can even be heard laughing in the background when she sees what Ruti has done.

          “It was so funny, I couldn’t help myself,” Kopelis told ABCNews.com in an email Wednesday, adding that she didn’t train Ruti to do that. “At the start I thought that she just wants to play with the leash but when … I gave her only the leash she showed no interest, every time I put the leash on Pemba or my other dog, she takes them places.”

          She added that she’s glad people enjoy the video and is amazed at the overwhelming response.

          “I realize that this is very special. I like it that people enjoy the movie,” she wrote.

  5. lol.

    That’s basically the essential difference between a freethinker and someone that has been trained since birth to exhibit loyalty and blind obedience.

    haha

  6. Interesting behaviour. The dog is so obedient. How can you not like dogs Jerry?

    2. Duncan’s right. Just like I can’t force myself to believe in God, I can’t force myself to like d-gs.

      But that doesn’t make me a bad person. . .

      1. But there still has to be a reason – that’s how the mechanistic cause and effect thing works.
        For me it’s that they bark and they stink and they want to lick you all the time (when they’re not licking their own ….)

    3. [drum roll]
      I like d-gs, I just couldn’t
      eat a whole one!
      [kaboom-tish!]
      It’s the way I tell them. That gets me thrown out of even quite sleazy hotels.

    3. Diane, I think you are going to like this. I ran across it just a day after your comment here but it seems like ages in the blog world, doesn’t it!

      Anyway, here it is, entitled, “A boy, his dog, and a puddle”. I’m giving it here with the Roger Ebert article about it because his commentary is quite lovely as well.

      A friend of mine once said that “Dogs are your boyfriends, and cats are your girlfriends. No need to choose; they both have a place.”

      Enjoy this.
      http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2013/02/a_boy_his_dog_and_a_puddle.html#more

      1. jesse, I wanted to thank you for that right away, but first I had to bookmark it and email it to some family members. 😀

        That made my evening! And you’re so right about Ebert’s commentary. Thank you!

    1. I once saw a video clip of cowboys herding… cats, and the cats were cooperating. IIRC it was an ad for EDS.

  9. Childhood memories.
    My father’s Irish Setter shared a garden with my grandmother’s cat. They would always drink and eat from the same bowl, following a strict protocol: the cat always took precedence over the dog.
    The cat leisurely took her time, while the setter watched her back. Then she would clear the dining spot, the dog would wag his tail and take her place and enjoy his meal. Then he would curl up and wait for the cat to cuddle in for a common post-prandial nap.

    A neighbour, a bitter old man who resented having his hunting license revoked and his gun impounded, eventually poisoned father’s setter. The cat’s behaviour changed. She stopped showing up for feeding, she basically went AWOL. A few days later, she was run over by a car in front of the house.
    (It was the eve of my seventh birthday, and the memory is still vivid because it always felt like my childhood somehow ended that day.)

    1. Ouch, what a story. Do you own a cat/dog now? There are embittered people – and I always say, ‘they have to live behind their eyeballs’ – however, a trauma at 7yrs of age.

    2. First so touching, then so wrenchingly sad. That would definitely have scarred either of my children for life, had they witnessed it at such a tender age. (Me too.)

      Took me months to counteract the effects of a showing of “Old Yeller” inflicted on my son in 2nd grade…

      Reminds me of many fond tales we have of our own dog/cat relationships, esp. those involving an infinitely tolerant black lab and a kitten…

    4. Yes, it’s a lie that there is no sharp demarcation between childhood and adolescence. My childhood ended abruptly when I was encouraged to throw my old worn out teddy bear in the bonfire.

  10. A thousand years ago, this would have been evidence enough to burn her for witchcraft.

    1. A thousand years ago making and then replaying a video recording would have had her burned for witch craft, then drowned, then …

  11. I like both cats and dogs so please don’t think I’m trying to prove a point here except that dogs sometimes bring cats home too. I think the difference is a dog will do it for you if he can, but a cat will only bring a dog home if it’s the cat’s idea. Anyway, it appears to me that the cat in this video has accepted that resistance is futile so she lets the dog do her thing:

    http://youtu.be/7wTRCiBahvU

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