Evolution

I am not talking about evolution from the biblical perspective but from where the cats now think they can beat a dog's ass perspective. Molly and I ran into another cat this morning on our walk and the cat was fully prepared to come out swinging. He was under a truck and Molly sensed he was there and all I heard was a growl that sounded like a 454 under the truck's hood. He hissed just to let us know that one wrong move, he was going to slap all of the ass off of both of us. We made the collective decision to turn around and go the other way... Do cats not know that cats have been chased and slapped around by dogs for centuries? Are we dealing with a genetically altered "super cat"? What happened to the days of the Sylvester the Cat cartoons where the cat knew and respected dogs?