His owners describe Strider as being “fat and lazy” but the 10-year-old black house cat redeemed himself by alerting the oblivious humans that their home was being burglarized.
OK, so guard dogs guard and guard cats... well, there ain't no such thing as a “guard cat”, right? Not exactly – cats just tend to do things their own way. When they're in the mood. And when it doesn't otherwise inconvenience them. Haters gonna hate but as any cat owner knows, cats gonna cat.
Strider, an overweight and under-enthusiastic black domestic shorthair from Olympia, WA both fits that old stereotype while proving he can guard his otherwise dismissive yet faithfully can-opening owners just as well as any trained Doberman. He just does it his own way.
To be fair, Strider showed little if any get-up-and-go over the 10-odd years spent being a pet of the Gansberg family. “He'll just stare at you and meow,” explained man of the house Kerry Gansberg. “Well, he's fat and he's lazy," added Kerry's wife Barb. “He's kind of a pain in the rump.” Perhaps the pair of burglars who entered the Gansburg's home in broad daylight early in October of 2016 figured Strider was a pushover. Not so!
Upon noticing the intruders, Strider swung into action... by entering the Gansberg's master bedroom (an area he knew was off-limits) and surprising Barb Gansberg with his unexpected presence. “He's looking at me and I thought, 'what the heck is wrong with you?,' and he sat right outside the door, in the hallway."
Her spidey senses tingling, Barb ran out of the bedroom only to find the pair of burglars; one holding her purse in his hand. “So I just yelled, 'HEY!' and off they went.” She immediately phoned the police and the intruders were nabbed before they'd made it more than a block.
You probably think Strider's now the family's hero but the Gansbergs aren't so easily impressed. “Yeah, he may have saved the day; I didn't know the cat had it in him,” Barb grudgingly admitted to KOMO News. “He's a hero for the time being,” agreed Kerry Gansberg, “but all good things must come to an end, unfortunately.” As for Strider, he's already back to his usual daily routine of constant lounging around punctuated by regular trips to and from his food dish, as seen in this video.
