Colly Lord wrote: Bookworm wrote: I can't believe that dogs are losing.
I can't believe it either! I've had both cats and dogs and the cats were much higher maintenance and did scads more damage around the house. And the dogs didn't need a litter box (cats don't obey fences.) I've only known one cat owner who managed to train her cats to walk on a lease. Smell? Our dogs don't smell even when they do get wet and when we go to estate sales, if the previous owners had cats, you can frequently tell by the smell, but not if they had dogs. Yes, we pick up after the dogs, what, twice a day? And if we skip a day (picking up in the yard), the house doesn't start to stink and dogs don't start going potty elsewhere in the house. But, wow, if you ever forget that litter box - whew! Stink and rapidly de-trained cats result almost immediately.
Cats are for people who don't really don't want to be bothered much by their pets. Instead of walking them and getting some fresh air and exercise themselves (dogs help encourage healthy exercise in their owners), most of our neighbors who have cats, just let them roam loose around the neighborhood. We can't leave our garage door partly open on hot days, because the one time we did, a stray cat came in and pissed on things.
The only really affectionate cats I've known were Abyssinians and they belonged to a friend of ours, but would cuddle up to anyone - probably even burglars. Very soft, admittedly, but you only have to pet the right places (ears and under throat) to find just-as-soft fur in many dogs.
Our dogs PLAY with us - the cats idea of "play" is "wiggle something at me so I can stalk and pounce on it. I'm a hunter!" Try to get a cat to play fetch with tennis ball. I've even taught both our dogs the phrase "in my hand" so I don't have to pick the ball up off the ground. Bending over as many times as the dog wants to fetch can get a little rough on the back. Sometimes I just lie in the hammock and let them drop the ball into it where it rolls down to my hand and I can toss it easily again. Hey! I've got a right to relax a little after walking the dog, right?
Make you feel needed? All the cats I've known, and most owners, admit that their cats seem to do just fine for brief or extended baseness. None of that mushy, dog style jumping, kissing greeting when you get back from a 10 minute trip to the corner market. If you're lucky, a cat might open one eye from it's napping and vaguely note that you've returned. The affection-attention-addicted dogs make you feel WANTED when you get home.
Our dogs follow us from room to room, never satisfied to be isolated from us. If we want to nap, they're happy to nap. If we want to road a book, they want us to play fetch. (OOPS - OK, maybe our dogs are also al little TOO attention addicted sometimes.)
My Dad used to say cats were sneaky. Well, heck, it's not their fault their claws retract, but on hardwood floors, you can hear the dog approaching (click, click click), but not the cat. Speaking of claws, I never caught our dog climbing to the top of the living room draperies. The cat, yes, the dog, no. Also, the dog has never gotten up on counters, table tops or other human work surface areas. My dog also never slept on top of my PC monitor and shorted it out with shed fur, like my cat did, either.
In the post with the kitten picture - that was unfair! Kittens are undeniably extremely cute and cuddly. Their only fault is that they always grow up to be cats. Dogs on the other hand, well, some dogs will act like their puppies until they get old and gray and can't run anymore.
House breaking: Our dogs, once housebroken, stayed that way. Our cats, litter trained or not, they'd sometimes still decide to sneak a leak (or furball) behind the sofa. When we pulled up the carpets to get new ones, we found out just what our cat REALLY thought of the litter box. Sneaky cat would always poop in the litter box, but then pee anywhere it felt like, apparently. (hahahaha - I gave that house to my first wife in the divorce 10 years ago, so I didn't have t to deal with the cat damage.) At least when dogs have their "accidents" (however rarely), they have the decency to act ashamed about it. You KNOW when you're dog has done a "bad potty" and the dog does too. The cat really doesn't give a damn what you think about where it went. Have you EVER seen a cat try to look like it's saying "I'm sorry"? I doubt it.
Yes, dogs chew things. We got them enough toys and keep my socks off the floor and the problem is gone. Keeping things off the floor doesn't keep them away from cats though. I've seen one leap from the floor, straight up 7δ½ and a half feet to the top of the kitchen cabinets in a single leap.
Protection: Yeah, our dogs would bark lots if someone entered the house. Probably also knock them down so they could lick them silly with greetings. We can get them to "stay" and behave when we have invited visitors, though. How do your cats behave? What would they do if a burglar entered the house? Do you think the cat would feel any interest in protecting it's owner? Of course not. Cats aren't pack animals and you may be their lunch ticket, janitor, and groomer, but you are NOT their pack leader, whom they might follow, obey, and defend.
Usefulness: No such thing as seeing-eye cats, is there? Or service cats to help carry things? Guard cats? hahaha - not unless you own an exotic larger breed, maybe. If some stranger opens the outside door, most cats will either hide, or scoot out the door, never to be seen again. Has anyone trained their cat to fetch their slippers or newspaper? OK, I do recall seeing a cat trained to use a toilet and flush. Besides, the properly trained toilet-using cat was on a show called "Amazing Animals" - not a show called "Normal Animals". If you spill food on the dining room floor, does the cat come to clean it up? Or does the dog get there first and do a better job of it?
OK, so yes, cats are cute, cuddly, and due mainly to their body size, produce less poop than dogs. But they're essentially useless, except for possibly emotional companionship - if you can call their roommate style aloofness "companionable" OK, maybe I used to have a cat that slept curled on my shoulder near my ear at night, but I think she did it mainly for the warmth.
I also sometimes wonder exactly how much cat owners "love" their pets - and here I'm referring to those cat owners - you know who you are - who let their 'beloved's' outside completely unsupervised, to "do their business' in other people's yards, in other people's children's sand boxes and play lots, to trespass through the neighborhood, teasing all the dogs who're trying to take their guarding duties seriously. Really now, the "free spirit" crap is going too far - unless you really don't care if some car in the night "frees" the "spirit" of your cat from its body with a horrifying (to both driver and cat) squish. Cats do NOT recognize fences as barriers. If you love your cat, leash it or keep it inside. Don't give me any of that "free spirit" b.s. I've seen too many road kill felines. Ditto about caring for your animals goes to the idiot dog owners who carry their dogs around loose or improperly leashed in the back of an open pickup truck at 70 miles an hour down the freeway. I've seen dogs in large dog crates, secured in the back of a pickup - score one for that owner. I've also seen one dog leashed to the center, front of the pickup bed with the passenger keeping a close eye on the dog. The leash was rigged to NOT reach the side of the pickup bed. Score one for that owner, too. We keep our dogs inside our care, secured in the back seat with proper doggy-seat belts. I've seen dogs, unrestrained, fall out of pickup trucks - fortunately uninjured that time. I've also seen dogs carelessly leashed to the SIDES of the pickup bed. Do these people not realize the dog will be hanged by the neck if it falls out? None of this probably concerns cat owners - I don't think most people's cats go on car rides except to the vet and they probably hate those trips in the cat carrier - Though I do recall the one Internet photo of the motorcyclist with his cat riding on his shoulder with its own mini-helmet.
My dogs have never pooped in anybody else's yard and do not run around unsupervised except in our own fenced-in back yard or in the house. That's not true of 90% of the cats in our neighborhood, all of whom, I'm sure have visited our property at one time or another. I'm especially minded of the one that managed to stand on top of our fence and pee on the side of our house wall at a spot 5 feet off the ground, just so we could be sure to notice the yellow stinky stain. And don't even TRY to convince me that some DOG could've peed on a house 5 feet up the wall.
Sharing the bed: OK - hmm, yeah, two cats sharing the bed would still leave more space than our 37 and 48 pound dogs sharing the same bed. We let the dogs snuggle for the first half hour and then we tell them "Go to bed now" and they both get off and go to their individual beds. Which reminds me... Language...
Language: I've never owned or known any cats that even pretended to know more than their own name and the sound of a can opener. Our dogs, on the other hand... Whew! Our first dog has a collection of over 30 unique stuffed toys and you can ask her to bring any particular toy by name, and she will bring you THAT toy and no other. She's 6 years old now. She also taught us that she knew "Mat!" when we first got her as a puppy. She'd go to her "mat" or any particular towel that we laid on the floor and pointed to and named "mat". There she would sit, proudly posed, with an expectant look on her face. It's been so handy a trick that we had her teach the other dog the same "trick". Now, if we want them to behave and sit still for a minute, or get away from the kitchen when we open the oven, we just say "Mat!" and off they go, each to their own mat. Of course, now they get "rewards" of perhaps a kibble or two of dog food to keep it reinforced, but the mat trick really comes in handy for emergencies, too. Like when the older dog, maybe gets something in her throat and has to cough up a bit of spittle, if we hear her start coughing, we say "Mat!" and she runs to cough it up on her mat - which we can just toss in the washing machine and saves us cleaning the carpet. Have any of you cat owners taught their cats where to cough up hairballs for convenient cleaning? I wonder.
Our dogs, of course, also know the common dog-loved phrases such as "Who wants to go on a car ride?" (or simply "car" if you want the key word), and "doggy dinner time" (entire phrase - they know the word "dinner" is meaningless to them unless it has "doggy" in front of it.) They can also tell time. Both our dogs know that 6:30 is when to get me up - and they do so with a polite rapid ear-flapping - no crude barking. After all, they don't want to wake my wife, too (I got remarried in 1997 and been happy every day since.) They also know that "doggy dinner time" is at 5pm - not 4:30 or even 4:45. They will come "fetch" us at 5pm if we aren't already getting their dinner ready. The cat I had, so long ago, thought I wanted 4am wake-up calls. harumph! Our dogs also keep a reasonable bed-time - 10pm and will come into the room with us, get our attention, and then go to the master bed to warm it up for us.
Socializing: People got to dog parks and meet with other people and their dogs. I haven't seen the new movie, "Must love dogs', but I wonder if it's about that. I've never heard of any "cat parks" where people go to meet other cat owners. Maybe cat shows, where they go to show off their fancy breed cats, but we never went to those when we had our two tabbies (which are listed in the book as "Tabby - While not a recognized breed, Tabbies are perhaps the most numerous..." phaugh! even cat fanciers can be as snobbish as cats.) I just never see any cat owners getting together with other cat owners to go out on walks together. Maybe it happens somewhere, but I've never seen it. As I say elsewhere in this post, I've only met one owner of leash trained cats.
For the people still unsure why cats seem to be winning this poll (at this time), go rent the movie "Cats & Dogs". And for the few owners of Abyssinian's and maybe some other breed of cat that mimics the affection of a dog - enjoy your pet, you lucky people. There is nothing more disappointing to a family than to bring home a cute kitten that they feed, litter train, and play generously and carefully with, only to have it grow up into a cat that doesn't want to socialize. Of the two cats we had before the marriage ended, one would let you hold it in your lap and pet it for a while. The other one was only interested in coming near if you just fixed a bowl of ice cream and it wanted to help you eat it. They were both very soft though.
And if the cats eventually win the poll and the dogs appear to lose, it'll be because the dogs don't mind. They still have their humans and that's more important than any poll. For that matter, I also don't care if the cats win. I've gotten quite relaxed about it after all this venting.
I've had some cute cats, but I've never had any pets as obviously affectionate as our dogs.
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I hope this post under "debates and heated discussions" was sufficiently on-topic and amusing enough reading for both dog and cat owners. Arguing which pet is "best" is about as pointless as arguing whether Windows PCs are better than MAC's or vice versa. Each pet (or PC) will be chosen to suit the desires of its owners and the one that is "best" is the one that owner is happiest with. I just happen to be happier with dogs (and Windows PCs).
(hmm - I wonder if MAC owners prefer cats? I wouldn't be at all surprised.)
