http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/8303126.stm

Rexx is certainly a very intelligent dog. She learned how to open the screen door and the street gate very quickly. She learned how to get us to give her dried cat food which she prefers to the doggy kind.

She would fumble with her paw to open the cupboard where the dry cat food is kept and would then stand and look at us until we got her message.

Rexx has very short fur and in winter when she starts to feel cold she learned to use her right paw to try to scrape up the doona to let me know that she wants to come under it.

I noticed that I accidentally insulted Rexx by using the male personal pronoun. Rexx is actually a girl.

Rexx also wants to chase 65 ton B Doubles and buses which she think contain large growling dogs in their engine compartments. Not as big as the Great Sky Dog but still big and fierce and needing to be put in their places.

Actually most cats are very polite. I used often to visit pet shops to interact with the kittens and I noticed that if I patted most kittens with my finger (you can’t get a hand into a kitten cage) the kitten would often respond by licking my finger back.

I had never noticed this behaviour with an adult cat until the last couple of years. My cat Hu Zi (Son of Tiger in Chinese) started responding to my patting him by grooming me in return. The fact is that cats are just as much social animals as are dogs but their techniques of social interaction do not appear as similar to our ways of interacting as do the techniques of social interaction of the dog.

Cat social interactions are much more subtle. For example a cat will indicate that it is friendly by narrowing its eyes, but humans misinterpret this as hostility just as the cat mistakes the narrowed eyes of a cat hater as a sign of friendliness.

at any rate, why would anyone choose to be a cat butler when there are such splendid creatures as David’s?

That is because cats do not meet life head on like a dog does! You want see them [cats] lapping the air outside a car window either or rolling in a dead fish on the beach.

“I think you have shown me just what the Great Sky Dog must look like.”

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Call it divine revelation. Have faith. It’s true. I like your dog, Rexx. Smart and holy–what more could anyone ask?

Whenever there is a thunder storm my dog Rexx goes outside and barks at the Great Sky Dog that is threatening to invade his territory. I think you have shown me just what the Great Sky Dog must look like.

You should have seen that dog dragging the “mother of all racquetballs” around.

His job, as he saw it, was to bring blue balls back to me and he was either going to do it or die trying.

Like my friend said in college, “you don’t really own a cat, you just kind of live with it.”

“You’ve got to shake your fists at lightning now
You’ve got to roar like forest fire
You’ve got to spread your light like blazes
All across the sky
They’re going to aim the hoses on you
Show ‘em you won’t expire
Not till you burn up every passion
Not even when you die
Come on now
You’ve got to try
If you’re feeling contempt
Well then you tell it
If you’re tired of the silent night
Jesus well then you yell it
Condemned to wires and hammers
Strike every chord that you feel
That broken trees
And elephant ivories conceal”