Quote:
Originally Posted by NatCh
Oh. Must have been the voices in my head again. 
We have one who loves almost everyone, so when he doesn't like somebody, we assume there's probably something unapparent that's 'off' about them (mentally/emotionally/etc.), it's a better meter than you might expect. |
Quote:
Originally Posted by nekokami
One of my cats likes everyone. The other likes playing with everyone's heads. She pretends to be a cute little kitty, and when people come near her, she performs her instant metamorphosis into a Frenetic Buzz-Saw of Doom. Then she follows people around, or, by preference, sits in the middle of the doorway they are about to go through, and looks up at them with a gaze that is somehow simultaneously innocent and quite frighteningly malign.
She's mellowed a lot over the past few years, but she used to single particular people out for this treatment, including my mother and one of my best friends, neither of which had anything "off" about them, as far as I can tell. I think she picks on anyone she thinks she can get a good reaction from.
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One of my cats is the Jekyll/Hyde type too. Looks really cute, until you try to pet her and then instant buzz saw. I am one of the very few people that can actually pick her up and not be shredded ... and that took about three years of working with her.
The dogs .... well, they are just plain sweet. I'm not certain why they get shy around some of the men here (it never seems to be a woman), but I suspect it might have something to do with cultural signals. By that I mean that a lot of the Mexican workers who are employed here (or come in as independent contractors) have been raised in a culture in which dog fighting is the rule, so many of them expect my dogs to be mean, and they react to them that way ... even though I can't really spot the difference in body language, I think the dogs can. It's a theory anyway. I've only noticed them to shy away from a few people, but all of those people have been culturally Mexican males. However, it is not all of such males ... there are some who have been around here for so long, and they know the girls and know the girls are sweet dogs. With those guys, it's business as usual for the girls .... they try to lick them to death.
I have had several people ask me why it is that so many of my animals are so friendly, absent a few that were so badly abused that it will take a long time before they are really comfortable around other people. The truth is, I have no idea. I don't think I do anything particularly "special".