As most of you know my son is a veterinarian. Therefore he has a lot of critters roaming around his house (thirteen of which are kids). That includes about a dozen cats, some plain, and some exotic. My grandkids can be seen cuddling the critters as can my daughter-in-law. I never cuddle cats because Im allergic to most of them. I give them a little tickle on the nose except for the one man-eater whose name may be Tabby they have over there.

The most feared cat is the man-eating tiger. Thats in India and there about. Fishermen in India wear masks on the back of their heads so that tigers wont attack them from behind.

That trick worked for a day or two according to those who know such things.

Then the tigers got wise to the ploy and again invited the fisherman over for dinner.

I learned all of this by carefully studying television.

In Arizona its the bobcat that is feared, especially the one with rabies. My friend there had one attack him on his front porch. He shot it after missing the first six times.

It had rabies.

My Arizona friend shot at rattlesnakes too whenever they scared him as much as that bobcat did.

One of these days hes going to shoot off his foot.

That will be okay though. He is a podiatrist and I watched him treat a man one time that had shot his foot on purpose. For what reason, I know not.

In my outfit in Korea, a G.I. shot himself in the foot one morning with an M-1 rifle. That made the Baker Company Commander as angry as a badger.

The reason given by the injured man was that he wanted to go home.

I could have spit on him.

Id rather face a hundred charging Chinese teenagers than shoot myself in the foot for any reason whatsoever.

Korea is too much of a diversion for this article but I want to keep it in. Therefore I will tell you again that one night a Siberian Tiger, the most beautiful animal in the world in my opinion, ventured up in front of one of our thirty caliber machineguns. He was probably looking or a couple of dead Chinese teenagers he could chew on.

When the great beast rattled the bobbed wire, the crew cut loose with machinegun fire.

The poor tiger didnt have a chance to jump and scoot out of there.

Of course our crew didnt know it was a tiger until the next morning.

This story is true of course and there are other stories about tigers approaching the line in Korea. War is hell on flora and fauna including tigers.

Back to Bobcats

I saw only two bobcats the six years I lived in Arizona. They were a very dark-complexioned pair, one as large as a cougar.

In the early days of Arizona, bobcats use to come into the tents of travelers at night which scared the lovatat out of the ladies. Lovatat is a new word I invented for this article. Make it sound more like loaf than love. Tat rhymes with cat. Loaf-a-tat. Got it?

In Payson, Arizona where I lived, in the early days the town blacksmith was having a brew in the local bar. A bobcat jumped through the window and landed on the back of the blacksmith who quickly grabbed the bobcat by the neck and through him right out the same window.

I guess the bobcat was too young to drink or forgot his I.D.

Incidentally, the tree under which the blacksmith use to work is still there. They use to chain jailbirds to that tree, having no jail.

There is a nice photo of a bobcat at http://www.desertusa.com/april96/du_bcat.html. They dont look all that ornery.

In Africa, its the man-eating lion that folks fear. That is all but the Masai who love to hunt lions with their spears.

Personally I would choose a high-powered rifle with a scope if I were so inclined.

There is a great pic of lions that you can use as a screensaver at http://www.webshots.com/g/25/527-sh/47726.html.

The African lions do not like bridge builders. Therefore dont try to build a bridge in Africa. The lions will eat you up. I learned that too on television.

The Masai are known as pastoral warriors. If you go to Kenya where they live you should study the Masai language. To get you started it is classified in the Eastern Sudanic subfamily of the Chari-Nile family of the Nilo-Saharan language stock.

That should get you started. You should find it in there somewhere.

Learn all about the Masai at http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/EthnoAtlas/Hmar/Cult_dir/Culture.7860.

In Colorado what is feared is the mountain lion, puma, cougar or whatever you want to call it in Colorado. It picks on children.

You must look big to a mountain lion to make it go away.

This also fails to work on bears.

I suggest pepper spray, the larger size that you strap the canister on your back. Keep the hose under your arm with your hand on the spray release nozzle at all times.

You must not let your kids go wondering around in the Mountain West by them selves. This also applies to the city of Vancouver and there about where mountain lions roam over large territories day and night.

If you see a lion in Vancouver dial LION on our cell phone. If anyone answers tell them to come and gather the critter up in one of their cages and haul him off to the Northwest Territory. (Actually, I made this up. Maybe dialing LION won't work.)

If a mountain lion comes close to you, I suggest that you say in a loud voice, BOOO or BEWWW. It should sound like brew.

Back away.

Dont run.

Look for a big stick.

Cut loose with that pepper spray!

Here in Idaho it would be the polecat or skunk to be feared if a skunk were a cat, which it isnt.

Still folks in Idaho take a jar of tomatoes or a large can of tomato juice with them when they go camping. You never know when you might need it to neutralize skunk odor. To me the odor of one is about as bad as the other.

The skunk is related to the weasel and must not be trusted. But, like I said, we cant include the skunk in this article because it is not a cat, technically.

Because the skunk has been omitted, we must report that the badger is most feared.

My uncle fought a battle with a badger using a pitchfork. That was in Randolph, Utah at the turn of the century.

NO! Not this last turn; the century turn before that.

The badger won the fight by breaking the pitchfork handle into toothpicks.

We may still have a few of those toothpicks in a bottle around here somewhere.

Actually the badger isnt a cat, so we must not include that both stinky and nasty fellow here either.