Domestic Housecat Trees Wild Bear

Donna Dickey has quite a watchcat.  This declawed tabby chased a roaming black bear up a tree and held it at bay for 15 minutes.  When the bear slid down to try to get away, Jack chased it, hissing and snarling, till the bear escaped up a second tree.  That’s when Donna called her cuddly pet home.  The story is told on CBC News, Canada.

Amusing things can happen when domestic and wild animals find themselves overlapping on the borders of human civilization.  Mammals and birds adapting to their human owner’s lifestyles exhibit behaviors that seem a curious mix of playfulness and confusion as their survival-honed instincts discover new situations: thus, the popularity of TV shows like The Planet’s Funniest Animals.  We should not attribute human emotions and thoughts to our fellow mammals, into whom the Creator did not breathe the breath of life to make them become living souls.  But there’s something poignant in this little story of Jack that illustrates how God’s creatures are more than robotic, yet less than sentient – and why we humans find their behaviors so entrancing.