Cats and Dogs

As I run down the residential streets in my neighborhood, I notice the outdoor pets, which naturally are divided between cats and dogs. The dogs, which are (hopefully) safely behind restraining fences, take a keen interest in my passing. They ferociously bark and snarl at me. Some jump at the fences that they are behind in a gesture meant to convince me that they would otherwise come after me and tear me from limb to limb. Even the dinky little pseudo-dogs with their high-pitched “yips” are “brave” in this way. Cats, on the other hand, see me running by with a completely different attitude. Their sense of territory is reserved just for other cats. I have never experienced a cat viciously meowing at me as I passed or chasing me down the street. Cats are cool that way: they have a clear idea of what it means to mind your own business!

As a young child, my family had cats for pets. Ever since I was about nine, though, all of my pets have been dogs. Cats and dogs, as individuals, have their own distinctive personalities, and most are pretty interactive with their owners. But dogs, with their emotional bonding, can sometimes take things to extremes. With a dog, I sometimes feel that I am with someone whose entire sense of happiness is based on my second-to-second interaction with them. There is this continual eye contact thing going on between dogs and their owners. Cats do that, too. But nowhere near to the degree that dogs cling to people.

Cats and dogs, to me, seem like human children in different stages of development. Dogs are like toddlers who have a deep emotional dependency on their parents. Cats, on the other hand, are like teenagers who, although still with that emotional connection (albeit in reduced intensity), are relatively assertive with their sense of autonomy.

I like both cats and dogs. Dogs, due to their territorial nature and their propensity to chase and bite people (and run away from home), need to be confined and looked after more than their feline counterparts. But on the positive side, I usually get a strong feeling of mutual empathy with a dog, even if it’s a dog that I’ve just happened to come across for the first time. Back on the negative side, though, I do appreciate an animal that knows when it needs to just shut up and mind its own business (like when I’m out running)! As a matter of fact, once when I was recently running past the assorted cats and dogs in my neighborhood, I suddenly had a strong urge to shout out a line I heard in an great old Walt Disney movie titled Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (featuring two talking dogs and a chatty cat): “Cats rule and dogs drool!” Guess which character said that!