It so happened that I have to live in two houses: one is in the city, and the other in the village. My mother lives in the latter, so I spend all my weekends there. And in the village house there must be a dog. So we had a mestizo of a German shepherd .
Most of all dog loved to run after the cat, catch it, press it to the ground with his front paws and lightly bite it on the withers. When I saw this for the first time, I rushed to the rescue of the cat, but my mother held me back, saying that this was their kind of game, and the behavior of our dog in no way threatened the health and life of the cat. However, the cat still showed with all its appearance that it was dissatisfied.
This way they ran for 10 years. And the cat always lost: the dog always caught it, and the cat never climbed trees so as not to be caught. However, 10 years have passed, the cat is still in excellent shape, and our German started having problems with his hind legs, like many dogs of this breed.
More and more often I saw how the dog, having run several hundred meters, stopped and walked hard home. Later he stopped running altogether and it became clear that his story was coming to an end. And then I saw something that I did not expect to see at all.
The cat began to visit our dog, lay down in front of him and let itself be bitten on the withers. And as it was unhappy all these 10 years, now it realized who its real friend is and to whom it owes excellent physical shape. Therefore, it often visited its friend in his last days.