Cooperation

I cooked dinner last night, and I baked buiscuits. Nothing complicated or fancy, just cracked open a can of Pilsbury Dinner rolls and placed them on a cookie sheet. Then I baked them in the oven at 350 deg. until they were black on the bottom and had a smokey charcoal flavor, before transfering them to a cooling rack on the kitchen island.

Since there are only 2 of us, and there are 8 rolls in the can, there were far more of these than we would eat with one dinner. No problem, I'll just wrap them up and save them. We can have leftover burnt rolls the next day. I wasn't in a hurry to wrap them up. I figured I could finish my dinner, and possibly even watch the end of a T.V. show. Then I could head back to the kitchen to load the dishwasher and put away the leftovers.

So about 10 minutes after I settle in to catch the end of my show, I hear a noise coming from the kitchen. It sounds like something fell. I sit up and look over the breakfast table to see what might have made the noise, and I see the cat and dog both running through the doorway to the dining room. The dog and cat frequently chase each other, so I figure I must have just heard them running through the kitchen. When the show is over, I head to the kitchen to clean up, and I discover that there is one dinner roll missing from the cooling rack.

Apparently the pets worked out a plan. See the dog can't really get the rolls off the island without making a whole lot of noise and attracting a lot of attention. On the other hand, the rolls are too large for the cat to carry out of the room, so if he's going to eat them he's got to spend enough time on the island to almost certainly get caught. It seems they figured out that the cat could quietly jump onto the counter and knock a roll to the ground. The dog could then carry the roll off to another room where they could enjoy the spoils of their crime without being seen.

Now I'm not certain that the dog didn't double cross the cat and eat the entire roll himself any more than I'm certain that the dog was keeping a lookout and signaled the cat when it was safe to jump up to the island. However, it does seem odd that the cat would intentionally knock the roll to the floor where the dog could get it unless he was sure he'd still get some for himself. I can't help but wonder what the cat knows about the dog that he's using as blackmail to ensure that the dog doesn't keep more than his fair share.