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Cats
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Cats

Learn English with this cat English lesson

Date: Nov 09 2012

Themes: Pets

Grammar: Adjectives

Intro

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For thousands of years, people have kept cats as pets. A cat is usually very independent and requires less attention than a dog. Cats can be cuddly and sweet, but they can also meow, hiss and behave badly.

Sara’s cat has been very bad lately. She decided it was time to take a very big step. Find out what it is and hear Sara and Vanessa discuss their cats.

人们将猫作为宠物来养已有数千年历史。和狗相比,猫通常十分独立,不需要太多精力照看。猫有时温柔可爱,但也有时会喵喵叫,发出嘶嘶声并且行为恶劣。

萨拉的猫近来很惹人厌。她认为是时候采取非常措施了。看看这会是什么样的措施,听听萨拉和瓦内萨谈论她们的爱猫。

Dialog

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2. Study - Read the dialog again to see how the vocab words are used.

Sara

Sara

Vanessa

Vanessa

Sara:  I just took a very big step with one of my cats the other day.

Vanessa:  What was that?

Sara:  We let him go outside. He’s always been an indoor cat.

Vanessa:  Oh, that is a big step. That can be very scary if a cat’s lived inside its whole life.

Sara:  Yeah, it was really, really scary, but he’s just always…he’s kind of bad. He’s like, always pouncing on our backs when we try to get something from the closet or attacking our guests, and he wanted to go outside really badly, so we just thought we should give him a chance.

Vanessa:  That’s the thing about cats, they’re very independent creatures.

Sara:  He’s doing a great job.

Vanessa:  Is he?

Sara:  Yeah, he is.

Vanessa:  Does he come back at night?

Sara:  Uh huh, he comes back at night. He comes back in to get food. He sits in our laps and purrs.

Vanessa:  Has he brought you any presents yet? Presents that he maybe has hunted for?

Sara:  I’m a little worried about that.

Vanessa:  That’s not a very nice thing to find on your doorstep.

Sara:  Have you ever found one of those presents on your doorstep?

Vanessa:  I have. My cat actually goes outside, but she goes on a leash. Even when she is tied up, she catches adorable little things like chipmunks and brings them to me as a present. I have to tell her what a good job she does, and then she purrs. So sometimes I end up with a few dead chipmunks, but at the same time my cat’s very loving, and she’ll crawl in my lap. It’s really nice just to have this warm, furry creature that can curl up on you.

Sara:  It’s true. Even my bad cat can be really really sweet too.

 

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Discussion

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Sara tells Vanessa that she just started to let her cat go outside on his own. She says it is scary to just let him go, but he was behaving badly in the house. Sara decided to give her cat a chance to be outdoors.

Vanessa agrees that this is a big step, and asks Sara if her cat has killed any mice or birds and brought them back to the house. Sara is worried about this, and asks Vanessa if her cat behaves this way. Vanessa explains that even though her cat goes outside on a leash, she still catches chipmunks and brings them home.

Vanessa says she doesn’t mind an occasional dead animal around the house because her cat is very loving and likes to sit on her lap. Sara agrees that cats can be very bad but also very sweet.

Do you like cats? Do you let your cat outside? Does your cat hunt like Vanessa’s?

 

Comments

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tompordin

tompordin

Iran, Islamic Republic Of

i love dogs further than cats because dogs are loyal – but cats go to anybody side who have more food

07:24 AM May 31 2014 |

Staisy

Staisy

Russian Federation

I dont know how it is in the country, but it is risky to let your cat or dog outside in a large city, as it is can  be lost or hitten by a car. There is a    special web site ,  where people ask for  any information about their lost  pets.  It is very sad to read these announcements.So thats why we never let our cat to go outside. 


I dont like when cats  are hunting. Our ex-neighbors  who lived on the first floor, let their cat outside, and sometimes she brought mice to their door or on their window sill.  It was   disgusting.

08:26 PM May 30 2014 |

Drmahsa1995

Iran, Islamic Republic Of

i love kitten but the problem is that i scared of cats  so i perefer to have a dog instead of a cat cuz dogs are always loyal but cats arent.and ifu dont give  them (cats)food for some days the will become so wild as wild as to kick u

06:17 PM Aug 13 2013 |

ddenniz

ddenniz

Turkey

My cat makes me mad. At the beginning, she was cute and easy going but after a few days, I think return to self and she has been wild. :D anyway, I still love her and also she is still cute. besides, after she acts out, she tries to endear herself :)

11:33 PM Aug 11 2013 |

NightlyOwl

NightlyOwl

Ukraine

My cat is walk outside. It naturally for they. The cats are wild animals. So I think it is crime to take cats at home always. Yes of course there is some fear about them but they need fresh air and more space for moving.  


08:59 PM Apr 05 2013 |

MAYAMY

MAYAMY

Saudi Arabia

i loooooooooove cats and i have cute one 

02:26 AM Jan 12 2013 |

zooz1988

Jordan

really I love the cats but unfortunately I don’t have one

06:14 PM Nov 28 2012 |

David Ackwerh

Ghana

hi
My name is david ackwerh,i am 26 years Old,I am Single

04:34 PM Nov 20 2012 |

lalind_lanna

Thailand

i just have got a kitten this week, he is tiny and cute.. ^^


i really love him…my kitty!!

01:43 PM Nov 14 2012 |

l..Romance..l

Russian Federation

I really love cats! And especially my own one! Smile

09:16 AM Nov 14 2012 |

ammyy

Australia

what ?

12:31 AM Nov 13 2012 |

Nicte ha

Nicte ha

Mexico

weird animals, but lovely Smile

02:58 AM Nov 12 2012 |

Persian Gulf Girl

Iran, Islamic Republic Of

This lesson reminded me of “persian cat”.

10:21 PM Nov 11 2012 |

shuu33

shuu33

Brazil

I like cats! even more than dogs  O(≧▽≦)O


speccialy him

09:02 PM Nov 11 2012 |

2 people like this

lucentezza92

Indonesia

Cat’s adorable animal, even for sharing noodles

12:12 PM Nov 11 2012 |

Dorothee

Dorothee

Germany

I love cats, because after all they were part of my childhood and adolescence. Here are some stories:


>Several years ago when I still went to secondary school, my former history teacher had a pet cat. One day the tacher gave us our now corrected essays about some historical subject back. When she came to a friend of mine she apologized and said something like “Looks like my cat played with my homework!” To show her student what she meant by that she showed the girl her now damaged booklet and explained that as it seems her cat had managed to get into her owner’s working room. There the animal picked up the next best booklet – in this case the one of my friend – and played with it. Of course my friend accepted her teacher’s apologies. In fact she was rather amused. Huh! We all were.


>The grandparents of another friend of mine have a farm. One day a pregnant straying cat came to them and gave birth to two kittens in their barn. By chance this friend of mine and her parents decided to pay a visit to her grandparents at around this time and she – the friend of mine – was eager to tame the cats. Their mother was afraid of humans and ran whenever she saw one, so the friend of mine just focused on her two cubs. Patiently she waited until these two little animals would crawl out of their nest. Finally they came out and she allowed them to sniff her, touch her with their paws and in the end she even dared to pet them. This way these two little fellows got used to men and when they were old enough to leave their mum, my friend picked them up and brought them to her grandparents’ house. If I remember her words correctly, they became very tame and friendly towards humans, but also a little mischevious…They sometimes loved jumping on the girl’s back when she expected it the least, sometimes giving her a good scare.


>A relative of mine got a male former street cat when she was still a girl. She named him Jackson – after Michael Jackson. The only thing troubling her was that her brother had some pet mice, so the door to the boy’s room was always locked carefully. One day however Jackson managed to get into this room and encountered the mice. However he didn’t harm them. He put his paw into their cage and to defend themselves the mice bit him, but Jackson didn’t do any harm to them in return. He just sat there, watched the mice and played with them until someone found him and took him out of this room. What a peaceful cat!


>The village I live in has a story that meanwhile nearly is a legend: When I was a kid people often saw a white cat with brown and black spots on our graveyard. Nobody knows where he came from. All we know is that nobody saw him outside the gates of this graveyard. The legend goes that he once belonged to an elder lady. When she died the cat didn’t want to leave her, so he followed her. At first he followed her to the morgue and when they buried her, he never moved too far away from her grave. They say that from that day on he only fed on mice, birds and on the food some people who knew this story sometimes brought to him onto the graveyard. I can’t tell you whether this story is true or false. All i know is that whenever I went to the graveyard when I was a child, he was there and we sometimes played. I remember one event in particular. My mother and me once went to the graveyard. I wanted to pet him when he obviously just wanted to be left alone. My mum told me to leave him alone, but I didn’t listen. I was just a child, I just wanted to play. In the end the cat had enough of my petting and he scratched me not too hard. It didn’t even bleed, but that was enough to make me shreek back. “See, I told you to leave him alone”, said my mother. I tried to play the situation down and replyed:”Why? I’m sure he just wanted to pet me back…with his claws.”
I learned my lesson that day.


>Another friend of mine once wanted a cat, but her mother said no. So one day she just sneeked out of the house, bought a little kitten and put it in a basket. The basket she put in the kitchen and when her mother came home to cook something the little animal already was out of the basket and curiously explored her new surroundings. At first the friend’s mother was upset of course, but then again she found that little fellow so incredibly cute and in the end the friend was allowed to keep her pet.


>I have several friends, so this story is about another friend of mine: She and her family once adopted two former stray kittens from a shelter. If I remember correctly these two actually were from Italy or maybe Spain, but a German aid-organization took them to Germany, because some – not all – shelters in Italy and Spain gas strays of they don’t find a home within a few weeks, while German shelters usually don’t. Anyway they ended up being the pets of this family and one of them – named Toulouse after a French city – later befriended the male cat of my friend’s German teacher. We found out, because sometimes Toulouse followed the other cat to his master’s home and there the teacher identified him as my friend’s pet thanks to its collar that said where Toulouse’s home is.


>In Germany the following video clip is considered funny: Some years ago when the weather reporter of a German TV channel wanted to announce the weather for the following few days, you could see something moving on the floor. The spectators got confused, because you could see a part of its ears and the top of it’s tail, but nobody knew what exactly was going on there. In the end the reported picked up a cat and apologized. According to him this was the pet cat of this television studio and actually it wasn’t supposed to be in this room.


P.S. I read somewhere that having a own pet (not forcibly a cat or a dog, but just any pet) affects children and adolescents in the sense of affecting their maturity. Underage people who have a pet usually mature faster and easier according to the book I read. Thus I may thank my friends’ pet cats for helping them to become the great people they are.

11:28 AM Nov 11 2012 |

foz12

foz12

Saudi Arabia

I love cats, but I never have one as a pet at home, I think it’s needs more responsibility, because it’s like one of the family members.:)

07:49 AM Nov 11 2012 |

2 people like this

Nina__smith

Australia

oh my god,no never ever i hate cats,when a person wanna i cry show me a catCry

06:22 AM Nov 11 2012 |

1 person likes this

sheitooonak

Iran, Islamic Republic Of

Wow i love cats their so cute specially cuddly cats


12:32 AM Nov 11 2012 |

pari.n

pari.n

Iran, Islamic Republic Of

woooow cats are my favorite animal specialy kittens ♥♥

08:55 PM Nov 10 2012 |

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