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The (almost) truth about cats and dogs
Dogs basically come in two types.
There is the friendly, go-lucky pooch, which would lick the hand of anyone who has touched a piece of meat in the past 30 days.
Then there are those hounds which would sooner rip off your arm if you look at them wrong or your breath is bad.
It should be noted that while I am a dog person, I'm not keen on all pooches.
(Attention: All small dog lovers should stop reading this column immediately.)
I don't see the purpose in small dogs. They eat, sleep and jump on your lap, just like a cat, only with less finesse. Small dogs don't protect, they don't herd, in other words, they don't work.
(Again, I told you small dog lovers to quit reading earlier.)
Small dogs are the leeches of the dog world. So, why do I like large dogs? The potential is always there to put them to work and for them to protect. If you can overlook the huge vet bills, the huge food bills, the huge piles of unmentionables in the yard....well, I'm not really sure why I like large dogs. I just know I won't ever own a small dog.
Cats, on the other hand, have more personalities than they have lives and the mood-of-the-day depends on a number of variables ranging from the position of the moon to the length of hair on their back paws -- and that's just within one cat.
My family is currently home to cats 14, 15 and 16. Yes, those are their names, which are based on the number of cats which have lived at my new house, the number of personalities they have and the likely number of days these cats will stay around.
No. 14 has already met its demise thanks to another family pet which will remain nameless, but has four legs and barks. Of course, No. 14 was the only friendly cat in the bunch and actually tolerated a two-year-old picking it up by the tail. But after the dog used it as a rag doll, I had to watch it slowly pass away. I watched the kitten take its last breath and utter its final meow. I was developing empathy for these feline friends -- that is until the next day.
Just when I thought I was getting a grasp on cats, a storm blew through the area and returned all my original feelings toward cats. Original ly purchased for their potential mousing abilities, these cats have taken to hanging out on our roof. With the exception of an occasional pigeon, there are not too many other animals living on the top of our house and the roof is certainly not a big draw for mice.
The first time No. 15 and 16 were discovered on the roof, my husband and I blamed it on the storm since there is no easy way onto the roof. Maybe the wind picked them up and threw them up there. Nah, they'd be damaged.
Maybe the cats know something we don't such as the approach of the next monumental flood and they were too lazy to walk to the top of M Hill a mere mile away, so our roof had to do.
Again, the empathy aroused and we drug out the ladder to help the cats down. But the next morning, the cats sat meowing at us from the roof as we emerged from the house. Obviously, they liked the view and we weren't going to spoil it for them by getting them down again. They were either going to get down by themselves or they would starve to death (unless they happened to nab one of those pigeons).
We stuck to our guns for four days until I finally caved and asked my husband to dig out the ladder. As I hung out the laundry (conveniently located right next to the overhang), visions of a starving, sunburnt cat launching onto my back from above danced through my head.
The cats haven't ventured back to the roof in several days, so they must figure the dogs pose less of a threat than the birds.
While I have gained a better understanding of cats in recent months, I still stand by my favorite cat joke: I like cats. In fact, I have two of them: one on either side of my fireplace.