I often get asked what I don't like about cats and why I think dogs are so much better. It seems that most folks either hate cats and love dogs or they hate dogs and love cats. Here are a few of the allegations that cat lovers often use against dogs, and why I don't agree with them :)
I enjoy gardening and I do not recall ever having a problem with dog mess in my garden. Cats on the other hand are constantly crapping in my garden. Also, although dog owners generally get all the jabs there are for their dogs, cat owners don't bother. So the cat crap that I constantly find in my garden is consequently laced with an unpleasant worm thing that could make me sterile or cause blindness in any foetus I may be carrying. Lovely. It is true that similar diseases are present in dog mess too, but there is widespread immunisation and worming in dogs and anyway the virus only migrates from the faeces after several days. Dogs leave their faeces on the surface, and the owner is generally standing next to them, so it can be removed almost immediately. Cats bury theirs, so there's no way of being sure to get rid of it before the ooglies have migrated into the soil. Incidentally, the worms eggs can survive in the soil for decades.
Of course, cat crap isn't the only sign that a local cat has visited - here are a couple of pictures of little gifts left for us by neighbourhood cats - don't look if you're squeamish!
In Britain, dog owners have to obey all kinds of laws. Dogs must be licensed and a dog owner who allows their dog to crap in your garden or consistently cause damage to plants etc can be prosecuted for tresspass. There are also fines for fouling public places. The same is sadly not true of cat owners.
This allegation from cat owners always intrigues me. They say that dogs are stupid because they allow themselves to be trained. That's funny, because in humans (and dolphins) an ability to learn is generally considered as being a sign of intelligence. A child who refuses to do what it's told and sits around sulkily ignoring the people around it is generally considered to be a problem child - definitely not an A grade student. Exactly why do cat owners think cats are so clever?
I think they mean "social" here. I would have said that dogs were less dependent than people by a long way. But they are social animals - they like company, as do people. Personally I can't see the attraction of having a pet that doesn't seem to know who I am and sometimes forgets to come home. I wouldn't want to share my life or home with a person like that either.
Then of course there are working dogs. The dependence thing is completely turned around. Can you imagine a cat finding someone in an avalanche or buried under a building after an earthquake? Or what about warning its owner about an intruder in the house? Or checking for drugs and explosives at the airport? Maybe defending its owner against a mugger/rapist in the street? Would a cat stand guard over your baby's pram in the garden? Would it leap from a lifeboat into stormy seas to take a life preserver to a drowning man? Would blind and deaf people be given seeing and hearing cats? Of course not, that would be silly. Cats don't do that stuff.
One person wrote the following to me:
> Dogs are to animals what developments are to wilderness: man made foul > creatures, victims of selective (not natural) selection.
Is there anyone really so foolish as to think that domestic cats are the result of natural selection? I do hope not. They have been as selectively bred as dogs. Before the house cat came to Britain this country had its own kind of cat - the wild cat. It's bigger than the house cat and an incredibly efficient hunter. Unfortunately it is now only found in very remote parts of the British Isles (mainly in Scotland) and its numbers are under serious threat from, you guessed it, the domestic house cat.
Incidentally, Britain's wild member of the canine family, the fox, is still found throughout Britain, as far as I know its numbers are unaffected by the pet dog. Our only native feline is the wild cat, which is not related to the domestic cat at all. There are at least some breeds of dog here with native canine ancestors.
I don't actually dislike cats in general. I feel the same about them as they do about us - indifferent. Cat owners on the other hand I'm not keen on. And individual cats 'kept' by my neighbours cause me great annoyance because they prevent me doing what I want to with my own garden. On hot sunny days I can't sit in the garden, because of the smell of the cat pee all over things. Their constant territory marking kills off some of my plants, their scrabbling after crapping kills off some more and their little hidden stores of worm and maggot infested crap reduce the pleasure of gardening, as well as putting my health at risk. They also scare away and occassionally kill/injure the birds and squirrels and hedgehogs that come to visit my garden. My parent's and neighbours' dogs do none of these things.