Vineyard pets and their quirks

Photo by Laura Roosevelt

Lily ritually tosses her Mr. Furry in the loo.

My cat, Lily, has a couple of out-of-the-ordinary habits. The first is her extreme preference for drinking water from a running faucet. Sometimes, to the amusement of visitors who might be rinsing a plate in the kitchen sink, shell race over, leap to the counter, crawl beneath their arms, and start lapping away at the running stream. When shes thirsty and no one is at the sink, shell plant herself at its edge and get mouthy at you until you come over and turn on the tap. Either that or just stare you down until you do same.

Cats drinking from running taps is not unheard of. (There is, for example, a popular YouTube video of a cat that sticks its entire head under the stream of water and drinks the droplets that run off its fur and into its mouth.) I figure its some kind of throwback to cats ancestors lives in the wild, where moving water in creeks and brooks was a likely thirst-quencher.

But Lily does something else that Ive never heard of. It involves Mr. Furry her stuffed mouse. (Actually, there have been multiple Mr. Furrys over the years). Covered in real fur, Mr. Furry is as close as Lily a West Tisbury indoor cat can get to genuine prey. Whenever I break out a new Mr. Furry, Lily goes wild, tearing around the house with it for a good 10 minutes. But inevitably, and usually within a half an hour, I find it in the same place: the downstairs bathroom john. Her motives are a mystery. Perhaps shes trying to drown it? Or wash it? Or perhaps shes decided shes killed it and wants to dispose of it neatly. Or maybe shes figured out that this Mr. Furry, like all his predecessors, is a fake piece of crap, so shes putting him in the crapper. Who knows?

I polled some other Islanders to see whether they had pets with quirky habits, and in most cases the answer was yes. Here is a sampling of what I learned.

April

Photo by Tom Rogers

April takes TV a little too seriously.

April is a six-year-old toy poodle owned by long-time seasonal Vineyard Haven residents Tom and Melissa Rogers. Whenever a doorbell rings on the television, April races to the front door and barks like crazy, positioning herself on the staircase landing opposite the door so shes at eye level with the handle. While this on its own is somewhat quirky but not unknown in the dog world, what makes Aprils case exceptional is that April does not live, nor has she ever lived, in a house with a doorbell. The only doorbell April has ever heard has been on the television. What gives? Has knowing what the doorbell means become a genetic trait in dogs? Or has April learned what it means from paying close attention to TV shows?

See the original post here:
Vineyard pets and their quirks