Jim Benton Cartoons by Jim Benton for March 27, 2019

Dogs need a reason. Cats just need opportunity.

Yeah, some of them are like that. But not most.

I used to cat sit for friends who had four cats. Three were normal catlike cats, alternately friendly or aloof, but even tempered.

The fourth one was, I’m pretty sure, brain damaged. He’d purr and nuzzle your ankles and without ceasing to purr he’d whirl around and bite or claw, or at least try to. He’d hiss and snarl at you while you were filling his food or water dish. He had found some secret way in and out of the house that neither my friends nor the other cats had discovered, so he came and went as he pleased at any hour of day or night. At least part of his route was inside the walls of the house. You could hear him slithering along inside them and overhead in the attic. He even had ways into locked rooms.

The biggest scare he ever gave me was one morning when I was wakened by the snarling and spitting sound and found him perched on the foot of the bed, angry and glaring.

He was not feral in the usual sense and had been raised from kittenhood by my friends. The craziness manifested as he grew out of his kitten stage. I lost touch and have wondered whatever became of him.

Probably high on ’nip.

I have one who makes himself look cute, rolling and rubbing and purring and looking expectantly at people, so they will pet him, which gets them in range or being bitten, which was his plan all along.

Is that a cat or a pitbull?

Cats love random acts of violence.

Reminds me of my niece’s cat Snapper.

Don’t roughhouse with kittens + hands. It’s adorably harmless when they are tiny, and is dangerous to all when they grow up and want to play.