One recent morning, I started out for my daily run. The day was gray, and rain was predicted. I could almost feel the clouds gathering, as if trailing me as I headed out of town. A shower might develop, I thought, but not a hard rain, nothing like cats and dogs. And I was right, the weather held, though I was wrong about the animals.
Two days earlier, in my lower-intermediate class of young high schoolers, we’d had a discussion about pets as a warm-up exercise. Who has pets, I asked, and what are they? Two children said dogs, one said a cat, and the fourth said no pet at all. “Dog,” I wrote on the whiteboard, and then started two lists, the good and bad about dogs. I asked the children what I should write. They were a little slow to respond, so I wrote “friendly.” What else? I asked. Soon we had two or three positive points in one column and six or seven negative points in the other, though all four students agreed that dogs were wonderful. The child who had no pet at all came up with the most items, all negative, including growling, barking, and shaking when wet.
Next the students tried to think of positive and negative points for cats, parrots, and rabbits. Playful was the word that got used the most. Even parrots, one child insisted, could be playful. “Let’s think of another word for playful,” I said. I taught them frisky for a dog that will chase a ball and sneaky for a cat that will hide behind a sofa to jump out at you as you walk by. Rabbit and parrot had me stymied. But now, a couple of days later, as I was slowly trotting up a steep hill, I suddenly felt something touch my calf. I turned, and there on my heel, looking expectant, was a golden retriever. The owner was a block back, smiling and calling the dog, which was now frisking about, ducking its head and wiggling its bottom, its tail fanning the air. I laughed in pleasure, clasped the dog’s head, gave the animal some good energetic rubs around the ears, watched as it darted off then scampered back. Frisky, yes, but also bouncy, I thought. Buoyant, bubbly, and vivacious. Wonderful words for a wonderful dog. “Goodbye, goodbye,” I told him, and continued.
Twenty minutes later, now on a dirt track between some fields as I circled back toward town, I saw a cat ahead of me, coming in my direction. Would it slip away into a field or try to make a mad dash past me? Neither. It slowed and then, when I was quite close, rose up on its hind legs to rub its head against my hand. A friendly cat, I thought, and scooped it up without thinking. Many a cat that tolerates or even seeks caresses may not want to be picked up. I’ve had perfectly friendly cats kick and squirm the instant their feet are off the ground. I wonder if being picked up by a stranger is the cat equivalent of getting into a stranger’s car, something you know never to do. This cat, though, let me easily fold her into sitting position in my arms, her fluffy, white belly exposed. She studied my face. Now what? she seemed to be saying. Slippery, a student had said of both rabbits and cats, referring to how they wriggle free from your clutches. How about trusting, I thought, petting the cat with one hand and balancing it in the other. She was a small cat, and there she sat, her spine in the curve of my palm, her front feet hanging down on either side of her haunches, her back feet sticking straight up. Lolling was what she was doing, and I would have liked to show her to my students. When my class got to the unit on weather—there’s always a weather section, at every level—maybe I’d invoke the bouncy dog and lolling cat. The Spanish idioms for rain are about clay pots, octopuses, and icicles. Cats and dogs win, no contest.
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