Everybody seemed pretty surprised by this video. I wasn’t. My first impulse was to check that my feral Mickey hadn’t been moonlighting in Bakersfield. He wasn’t. He was on the couch downstairs.

Quite simply, he’s The Man.

I’ve seen exactly this move before. When we got Elliott, he thought he was going to rule the roost, as his foster mother warned he might. Mickey was already elderly, fat, and inclined to very long naps. Elliott was young and full of himself. Izzie was young and happy for a sparring partner. She’s always had a Bruce Lee thing going, lots of posing, angry cat noises, and plenty of slick moves. Mickey had handled all of this like Neo handled Agent Smith at the end of The Matrix, with bored slow motion parries. Elliott, on the other hand, waded into her like Mike Tyson, usually without damage. But then came a day when he got above himself, pinned her down, and had her by the neck. She was screaming. I leaped from my seat but I wasn’t quick enough to get to her before what happened next.

Mickey, sunk in sleep on the bed in the master bedroom (or so we thought), came tearing around the corner at full charge down the hall and absolutely blew Elliott up, knocking him a full two feet away from Izzie. Very like the video above.

Boom. All done. Pecking order established once and for all.

Two factors here, seemingly at odds with one another. Mickey is one of three ferals Lady Laird adopted at the same time, one boy and two girls. The girls never have become acculturated to human companionship. Mickey was braver. He thought we humans might have our points, even if he was born skeptical.

It took me two years to get him on my lap. He had a habit of fishing with his tail. The end would hook and dance like a fish lure, and so I grasped it and let it go immediately. He’d cast again with the same result. One day he just jumped up and settled his considerable weight on me, purring like a housecat. Which he’s done ever since.

We’re friends. For life.

The other factor is a household with multiple dogs and cats. They become part of a pack. Every individual relationship is different, but there is loyalty to the pack and its members. In this environment, cats become astonishingly doglike. They know and respond to their names, they visit and nuzzle with one another, and they worry about one another. Cats will alert you when a dog is in distress, for example. They are also jealous of one another for couch time, and their irritation is not expressed to one another but to you.

I’ve had evenings when Raebert, Mickey, Elliott, and Izzie all take turns needing to be on a lap on the couch. It’s the culture of the pack, of which we are also a part.

Mickey keeps a low profile, but in some ways he’s the most interesting of the bunch because he’s come the farthest. He was born a wild thing, but he has come to love us. This is no anthropomorphic fantasy. If we both leave to go somewhere for a considerable part of a day, he gets cross. He glares fixedly at you as if he were winning a staring contest. Not allowed. The pack is supposed to stay together.

If you’ve studied wolf packs, there’s an alpha dog and there’s also an enforcer. Raebert is the alpha. Mickey is the strong right arm, despite his gathering age.

In truth, Elliott is probably bigger and stronger. Doesn’t matter.

Raebert and Mickey don’t hang together much. No need. Two big gray icons ruling the roost.

If we had a little kid here, Mickey would absolutely have done what the cat in the video did. It’s just his style.

Pat calls them not cats and dogs but the “four-leggeds.” They’re conscious, make no mistake about that. They make their feelings known. And not everything is about food.

P.S. I’ve written about Mickey before, notably here and here, despite his insistence on remaining more or less incognito.

For a bonus, he’s also mentioned here, which I link because it’s funny, back when Obama screwups were still kinda sorta funny.