pack mentality
I had an awful experience yesterday morning. The neighbor's cat, a near-grown male kitten, was cornered by three stray dogs in the alley next to our house. I watched helplessly as a burly black Labrador teaming with two other mutt-looking dogs cornered the kitten against the chain link fence, three feet out from the kitchen window. I ran upstairs and opened the upstairs window just as the cat's owner came running down the driveway. We were both too late; the kitten had stopped protesting and hung limply from the Lab's mouth as he ran away. The owner recovered the cat and headed in tears for the animal emergency clinic.
The cat did not survive. I am guessing the dogs were pets left behind during Katrina, and now rove as a feral pack.
I witnessed a similar pack attack in Santorini when I visited in 1992 during the off season. That cat appeared doomed until a shop owner emerged from a closed-for-the-season storefront with a broom. The marauders were driven off before any great harm was done.
I probably could have saved the cat if I had broken out the kitchen window and sprayed the dogs with the sink sprayer. Or, run outside in my underwear, grabbed a scrap 2x4 piece from the construction debris pile next to the alley, and run down the alley to bean the dogs. Instead I chose to put on pants and then run outside, with tree-lopping pole saw in place of broom, only to find the sobbing owner putting her limp cat into her car, and the trio of strays across the street nosing each other with heads up and tails wagging. It was the perfect dog equivalent to a high-five. I charged them, armed with my saw-tipped ten-foot pole (literally). They ran off toward Central City.