There are also serious altercations when I open a can of tuna

My roommate's cat is 13 years old, and to put it nicely, she is not very friendly. In fact, I happen to be scared of her, because I still have a scar on my arm from an incident last winter when I thought we could be friends and she thought I would be good for biting.

My dog is also afraid of her. The cat likes to sit in the hallway between my roommate's bedroom and the kitchen, which effectively prevents Francie from getting to or from the kitchen, the front door, or the bedroom. Every once in a while the dog will be in one of these places and she'll get stuck because she is afraid to go near the cat. She stands there, sort of frozen in terror, waiting for one of us to come rescue her. Sometimes we don't notice until she starts to cry. Which to me is a little funny because YOU ARE A DOG. You could totally take that cat. Don't be a wimp.

The biggest point of disagreement between these two is their food. At first we thought we had a problem because we'd be watching tv or playing video games and the dog would come out of my roommate's bedroom, licking her chops like she'd just eaten something completely and utterly satisfying. And the cat's food dish would be licked clean. But then? Sometimes I would go to my bathroom, where I kept the dog's food, and shut the door only to find that I wasn't alone. I had a friend! And she was hissing at me to get away from her food! Even though it wasn't hers. As much as I enjoyed our surprise get togethers, once we realized that the cat wasn't eating any of her own food anyway, I decided to give up and move the dog's food to a more neutral area.

I think this draws Francie's attention to the fact that THE OTHER THING IS EATING MY FOOD. Of course, she is too scared to do anything about it. So whenever she hears the cat crunching down puppy kibble, the scene in our apartment looks something like this:



which is to say that the dog sits and watches worriedly while the cat feasts away. When she finishes, she goes back to my roommate's bed or wherever it is she hides, and the dog goes over to the food and checks everything out. It's almost like she's saying to herself, "okay. Everything's okay. She just ate some food. It's gonna be alright. Now I can have some, because she's gone. Whew. That was a close one."

I'm not sure if she's ever going to figure out that she doesn't need to be afraid. But it is sort of entertaining this way, with the exception of making those rescues from the kitchen.