A friend of mine lives in an old farm house on the outskirts of the city. A cat (I’m almost 100% certain it’s a cat) lives with him. The cat’s fur is the colour of a freshly shined black shoe, the hair, growing only long enough to keep him warm on those long, frosty winter nights. The cat’s name is Jack Black, better known far and wide as J.B.
J.B. is no regular run-of-the-mill cat. Reason being, J.B. thinks he’s a dog. Like a friendly dog, he excitedly greets visitors at the door. He jumps up and down, runs in circles, all that nonsense! And one of his favourite things to do is to rest his head on a human being’s foot. If you whistle, J.B. will come running. “Ya got a treat for me?” he seems to be saying. He’s quite the critter! Visitors to my friend’s house often remark, “Hey man, your cat thinks he’s a dog.”
Although J.B. (the cat?) often carries on like a dog, he gives himself away as a cat when an obliging visitor rubs his belly. J.B. loudly purrs away, totally lost in ecstasy, to the point that the walls of my friend’s kitchen vibrate in response to the sheer power of the purring’s rhythmic eloquence. He gives himself away as a cat, too, when he presses his arched frame up against a welcomed visitor’s leg (I’ve never seen a dog do that). It’s at times like these that some people say, “Hey man, your dog thinks he’s a cat.”
Because he has so many traits usually reserved for canines, there are some people who truly believe J.B. is a dog. “If he has even 1 drop of dog blood,” said one person, “then that’s good enough for me. He is in fact a DOG!!!”
A dog? A dog you say? He doesn’t look like a poodle nor a hound. He doesn’t resemble Lassie nor Rin Tin Tin in any way, shape or form. Fetching? Forget it! J.B. retrieves neither stick nor ball nor frisbee for no man.
One day a visitor brought two dogs with him to the farm house. The dogs were curious, you know how dogs are and what dogs do! It was for this exact reason that the dogs were called in. The visiting dogs gave J.B. the ol’ sniff test. It was hoped their findings would prove at long last, one way or the other, whether or not J.B. was a dog. If nothing else, a dog knows what another dog smells like! Well sir, the dogs each took their turns with gusto, eagerly pressing their large wet noses under J.B.’s elevated long tail. One of the dogs snorted and sneezed after doing so. It was as if the many years of sniffing out the truth had finally caused a foreign irritant to wedge itself into one (or both) of his nostrils. I felt sorry for the dog, but what the hay, nobody was forcing him to do it. We, the folks gathered there hoping to get to the bottom of the mystery, were beside ourselves with the suspense of it all. The results of the smell test weren’t long in coming. The conclusion, J.B. is not a dog. He is a cat! The sniff test proved it!
You’d think that this silly controversy would have been laid to rest right then and there, but no, there are still some people who believe that J.B. is a dog. “If he has only one drop of dog blood in his veins …”
Some folks are convinced that J.B. is a cat, others are not. What do you think? Let me know. Meow!
UPDATE, UPDATE!
I’ve just been informed that J.B. (the cat?) has begun to write a novel titled “The Dog”. It tells the heart-wrenching story of a proud sleigh dog, the alpha, overcoming attempts at mutiny, the merciless elements of the north of 60 landscape and the cruelty of the desperate man leading the team of dogs into frozen tundra in his lust for gold.
Turns out that J.B. is a hell of a writer. Watch for the release of “The Dog” sometime in 2017. Accolades and awards are expected. J.B.’s next book “Wooff, I Have Spoken” is scheduled for release in 2018. I can hardly wait!!
Keep the Circle Strong,
South Wind
Keep the Circle Strong,
