hey-hey-hey." And all the time I lay there watching him, and waiting. He charged closer,and retreated; closer and retreated, and carried on until he was out of breath. Then hecautiously crept up to have a good sniff, whereupon I reached up and cut off half his nosewith two swipes of my left paw. He went tearing down the street with his tail between hislegs, making more noise, if possible, than he had before and attracting most of the otherdogs in the neighborhood. They all milled around, wowing and bowing and generallyfollowing the normal canine parliamentary procedure, which entails a lot of pissing onanything remotely vertical and sniffing each other's arses, and usually results in a fight ortwo. Had one of that lot had the intelligence of a retarded kitten, I would have been adead cat had I remained under my bush, but not one of them did and, anyway, I wasalready in the house, cleaning the muck off my left paw.The result of that confrontation was that we (his name was Wagter, which meansguard in Frankfurt in the Orange Free State) developed what could be called a workingrelationship. Whenever he inadvertently wandered into my territory (he was so stupid thathe would often follow his nose into places he didn’t want to go), he would sooner or latercatch my scent and leave immediately. Sometimes I would amuse myself by allowinghim to get well into my yard and then suddenly show myself. I would stroll up to himwith every appearance of casual friendship, which puzzled him no end, and belt him oneas soon as he was off guard. But, after a few such encounters, even his minute braingrasped the fact that I was dangerous to him and tie would run off as soon as he wasaware of where he was. That is a desirable state of mind to instill in any dog. He is at adisadvantage, is confused, and presents no danger wherever you meet him because dogsdo not really have a true sense of territory. Where a cat’s domain is bounded by the turfhe can control, a dog needs artificial barriers, like a fence or a length of rope, to showhim what he is supposed to look after. That is because dogs are basically cowards. Givenhalf a chance they will run from danger, but if they are cornered they will do a fair, job ofguarding, simply for self-preservation. A dog enclosed by a six-foot fence is a desperatecharacter. He senses his vulnerability and, being scared stiff, is best left alone. Awandering dog like Wagter is useless as a guard, and once thoroughly trained, no dangerto a cat with a sense of his own worth.It is that sense of my own worth that accounts for my success with Wagter, andwith all dogs. Pad I been less than completely self-contained, less thoroughly egotistical,T might have looked upon him as an interesting part of nature; might have accepted himas a fellow-traveler on the highway of life, and would undoubtedly have paid dearly formy folly. But, aware of my superiority, I refused to accord even the dignity of adversary.I simply taught him the little his intelligence could assimilate in as efficient and brutallyobvious a manner as I could devise in order to establish in his mind what was alreadyperfectly clear in mire- that he was nothing and I was all.Any amusement I may have derived from Cl-i3 training was totally one-sided. If Iallowed him moments of pleasurable illusion, such as the time I let him think we weregoing to "play" together (and almost took out his left eye), I quickly cleared up thatmisconception. Light moments such as that were, I confess, entertaining, but onlybecause they were tangible manifestations of my superiority, and not because Wagter hadany more standing in my estimation, than a post in a field. I did not need him to prove myvalue to me or to provide a yardstick by which I could measure myself, but every once ina while, in a carefree moment, I would "play" with him (my definition of play, rot his), in6
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