Canny Canines and Crafty Cats

I’m thinking that, for “canny,” definition 2 is what I’m thinking about, when I consider a recent encounter with a dog.

I was disappointed to see that the primary definition of “crafty” is negative:

“skillful in underhand or evil schemes; cunning; deceitful; sly”

I didn’t grow up with pets. I did have a bird, but it died, I think because I wasn’t always a good caregiver, like forgetting to feed it. I did have some fish when I was a senior in high school, but it was because I had to do a Science Project, and I chose to study changes in goldfish when they had several 24-hour days of consistent light compared to when they had several 24-hour days of consistent dark. I don’t remember the exact results. But the light won over the dark, I’m pretty sure.

When the boys were growing up, we really didn’t have much in the way of discretionary funds, and I told them that we couldn’t have any pets that had to make regular visits to the vet. Jeremy had a rabbit, and Kevin had a gerbil. They were fine pets, but neither were particularly canny or crafty.

I do know, however, that dogs can certainly trained to do amazing things. Maybe cats can, too. They just seem to prefer not to.

This little fellow seems young, and neither canny nor crafty. He’s just standing in the middle of a city street. Cars were driving carefully around him, without his moving or seeming concerned. Obviously, he stayed put for a while, looking around the neighborhood, long enough for me to stop the car, get out my phone, pull up the camera app, and take a photo. A few minutes after I took the picture, he sauntered on across the street, taking his sweet time. I drove around him slowly, just in case he decided, at a moment’s notice, to head back the other direction.

I hope he found his way home.

He was quite a departure from a dog that I saw, on a city street, a few days earlier. I was driving home on a one-way street that runs several miles through a residential neighborhood. There are a few traffic lights but no stop signs, so the cars move along at a pretty steady pace. I was driving in the far left-hand lane when I saw, several feet in front of me, a smallish dog heading across the street. He was on a cross-street, and, as he entered the intersection, he actually turned his head away from the lane in which I was driving; the lane in which there would be traffic, on a two-way street. I could so be making this up, but it seemed like he was checking for oncoming cars. Of course (because he is a dog), I suppose he didn’t realize that, on a one-way street, there wouldn’t be any oncoming traffic. He should have turned his head toward me.

The speed limit on the street is 30, so I wasn’t going too fast to be able to slow down. And, he scampered across the intersection pretty quickly. Again, I could be trying to put my human driving knowledge on a little dog. It just seemed eerie. He did just exactly what I would have done before crossing the street–turning my head to check for oncoming traffic.

Jeremy and Sarah have a cat. When I was a kid, I had a friend who had a couple of cats. I enjoyed playing with them at their house. They never struck me as being particularly “skillful, ingenious, and/or dexterous.” Maybe they were, and I just didn’t notice. Things were different for Jeremy and Sarah’s first cat.

Once, I was visiting them, and I was staying in their apartment one morning while they were both at work. I’d been reading and doing some research on the computer, looking for something interesting for me and Jeremy to do in Central Park, later that afternoon. I was sitting at the computer when Jeremy came back.

“How’d things go,” he asked.

“Just fine,” I said.

“Did the cat want anything to eat?” he said.

“How would she have let me know that?” I asked.

“She’d have put her paw on your knee.”

“Well, no, then. She didn’t do that.”

Jeremy went into the bathroom and closed the door.

The cat walked over to me and put her paw on my knee.

And I was dumbstruck.

This is the cat Jeremy and Sarah have now. I believe that he’s just as clever as their previous cat. And, he likes boxes just as much as the other one did. I send a box of gifts, and/or treats, to Jeremy and Sarah, periodically. The cat always finds and takes over the box. Jeremy says that I could just send empty boxes, every now and then, and the cat would be quite happy.

If you want to learn, then go and ask the wild animals and the birds, the flowers and the fish. Any of them can tell you what the Lord has done. Every living creature is in the hands of God.

Job 12:7-10 (Contemporary English Version)