Closet Case
Our cat Chester told me once about an old feline saying – “Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, I must be a dog.”
Ever since cats wormed their way into human homes and spied a dog sleeping on the family’s Woolly Mammoth shag rug, they have had a field day tormenting man’s best friend.
Cat lover and the man who came up with the concept of general relativity, Albert Einstein, most likely produced his famous quote on the definition of insanity; “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results,” while observing the interactions between cats and dogs.
When it comes to committing trickery between felines and canines, it’s a one-way street. While people find cats cute, affectionate and playful; dogs find them to be sneaky, conniving and plotting. Both observations are accurate.
The Chester Chronicles previously noted the satisfaction a cat gets when getting a dog to chase it up a tree, only to find itself stuck while the feline laughs hysterically. Comedy is subjective, but as long as the joke is on the dog, cats will always enjoy the punchline.
A golden retriever named Beckham, who clearly had taken too many headers off his cranium, was missing, even though his owner, Erika Longo knew he hadn’t gone outside. After several minutes of calling Beckham and looking around her apartment, Longo discovered the dog sitting confused inside a closet.
How could her dog get stuck inside a closet? Longo quickly came to an answer, it was her “evil genius” of a cat named Milo. Milo already had a track record of fooling Beckham into getting stuck in his crate, which seems ridiculous. Now, Longo needed visual proof that her cat was responsible for Beckham’s closet entrapment, so she set up a camera by the crime scene and waited.
It didn’t take long for history to repeat itself. Milo, who could be an excellent poker player, wasn’t showing his hand until he was captured walking into the closet that had its door ajar. Soon after, Beckham follows Milo into the closet. That’s when Milo coolly leaves the room and shuts the door. Even though the door didn’t latch, Beckham felt stuck and didn’t leave. Longo came to the dog’s rescue and Milo wasn’t happy about that.
Longo, Milo proofed her home as best she could to prevent another occurrence of the cat’s canine caper. “We’ve been closing our bedroom door and all other doors when we’re not home,” she wrote on one of her video postings.
But Milo wasn’t done. Humans being home hasn’t stopped him from resuming his fun at the expense of Beckham.
“I try to make sure he doesn’t do it when we are home also,” Longo said. “If he does get through with it, Beck is only in there for a very short period of time.”
After another closet catastrophe, Longo has to give Milo a kitty timeout. Unfortunately for Beckham, that hasn’t reformed the cat.
What makes Milo’s abracadabra closet trick so amazing, is that he’s already pulled a similar stunt with Beckham in 2021.
As noted earlier, the slight of paw execution was first done with Beckham’s crate. Milo would sit in the cage waiting for his dog pal to join him. Once Beckham was inside, Milo would sashay out the door and close it until it was slightly ajar. Beckham then showed off his dog IQ by believing he was locked inside and never tried to push it open.
Thus, Beckham is another example of Einstein’s definition of insanity.
Waiter, There’s a Frog in My Bowl
Reddit user Loustalet5 has a cat and a dog who apparently get along, but the cat likes to play tricks on his canine buddy.
Recently the unnamed cat found a live frog outside and decided it would be fun to bring it back to the house and drop it in the unnamed dog’s water bowl. Since frogs like water, this was a courteous thing to do for the amphibian. It would also be great entertainment for the cat to see his housemate’s reaction.
Unfortunately, we don’t know if the cat ever got a chance to see the results of its handywork, but by the cat’s intense look, captured in a photo posted by Loustalet5, there was great anticipation by the feline.
What we do know is that the frog was returned to the wild unharmed.
I asked our cat Chester if he ever pulled a prank on a dog.
“Of course,” Chester said with a smile. “It’s a rite of passage for any cat.
“There was this pain in the butt mutt named Gomer in the town I used to live in that would never stop yapping. One day I got the bright idea that if he wasn’t going to keep his trap shut, fido might as well put his paw in his mouth.
“I mailed him a bogus letter saying he’d won the grand prize in the latest Publisher’s Clearing House contest. The note said Gomer would receive an unlimited supply of dog food and that the first installment would arrive the following Wednesday.
“Of course, Gomer told all the dogs in town about his good fortune and invited them to a free feast on him. On the appointed day, a van stopped at Gomer’s house. All the stupid dogs were jumping up and down, wagging their annoying tails and barking like a bunch of frat bothers. The driver unloaded several boxes and took off, then the dopy dogs tore into the boxes.
“You know what was inside,” Chester asked, barely able to contain his glee.
“No idea,” I said.
“Cat food,” Chester shouted as he did a little jig around the room.
“And,” I asked.
“And Gomer was so embarrassed and his friends so angry that they gave him a tongue lashing you could hear in the next state,” Chester exclaimed as he now did the electric slide across the floor.
“You know what the best part was,” Chester said excitedly and not waiting for me to ask what. “That dog never barked another word!”
“You ever tell Gomer what you did,” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Nope,” is all Chester said.
“You don’t feel guilty about what you did,” I inquired, also knowing the answer to this question.
“Never,” Chester said dismissively. “You do know that cats lack that feeling. We never feel guilty about anything we have done, are doing or will do.”
“Anything else,” I asked knowing I was now striking out on asking the obvious.
“Sure,” Chester said. “Dogs are the reason I don’t believe in Darwinism. There is no way dogs should still be around when you see how dumb they are. Dogs are more like unnatural selection.”
“They were smart enough to latch on to people,” I said.
“Correct,” said Chester. “Which brings me to my second point on Darwinism not working as advertised. Humans. Any species that would adopt dogs and then call them ‘man’s best friend’ defies the concept of natural selection. On top of that, humans are taking the rest of us down with them by screwing up the planet’s climate. And if that doesn’t work, you morons have nuclear weapons to do the job even quicker.”
“You actually make a good point,” I said to my Al Gore of a cat.
“That’s why us cats are making friends with Elon Musk so we can get the first rides off the Earth after he’s done building his interplanetary spaceships,” Chester said. “We’ll make sure to wave bye bye to all of you as we watch the mother planet destroyed.
“And that’s no joke.”
The Chester Chronicles 
Milo is a hero to cats everywhere
LikeLike