‘Okay so a cat, a dog, and a crow walk into a patio’: Bird makes an unlikely friend when he swipes cat’s food for surprisingly wholesome reason

They say that there are two sides to every story. This is an unthinkably reductive way of thinking about things. The fact of the matter is that there are as many sides to each story as there are grains of sand on Earth; reality, after all, is just the stuff that we tell each other. Truth is another matter entirely.

In saying that, the video you’re about to see could have been cut off at the halfway point, and we would have continued on with our days thinking that this corvid was a conniving scumbag. Those who stick around to the end, however, will discover a much more wholesome truth.

Captured by Lenny Letourneau and distributed by TikTok‘s @pubity, we can spy a profoundly unimpressed cat chilling out on a gorgeous patio table with a tin of wet food nestled in front of him. On the other side of the dish, however, is a crow who seems to fancy himself as Robin Hood, given his usurping of the nourishment from the cat’s immediate reach.

As the crow begins chowing down (to no protest from the cat, curiously enough), it’s starting to look like an open-and-shut case of an inter-species smash-and-grab, but as it turns out, the Robin Hood likeness goes much further than it seems. No sooner does a pup role up to the edge of the table to see what all the commotion is about does the crow pick up a piece of wet food, trot over to the dog, and gingerly place the wet cat food in the dog’s mouth. Peace has been achieved.

It’s an infinitely curious sequence of events, to be sure. Crows tend to be standoffish, so to see this one offer up a morsel to a dog of all things is as unusual as it is sweet. It’s entirely possible, then, that this crow is a regular visitor to the premises. According to crow and raven photographer June Hunter, befriending a crow involves gift-giving in the form of food and water, and establishing a consistent visiting schedule. The same crows tend to occupy the same area, so if you befriend a crow near your house, odds are you’ll continue to befriend that same crow as time goes on.

Perhaps Lenny’s goal was exactly that; to befriend the crow. After all, wet cat food often contains protein (a must for winning over crows), and the top of a sleek patio table is a relatively strange spot to be eating wet cat food. It might also explain why the cat and the dog seem to get along with the crow so unceremoniously. Indeed, Lenny here is probably assembling a party of animal companions in hopes of having the optimal team comp for when the apocalypse strikes. All he needs now is a rhinoceros.