19 thoughts on “Cats Are The Best: An Annotated List

  1. I’ve been bitten and/or scratched by many a cat in my day, including the one I let live with me to save her from being executed by her former owner. She liked to hide behind my couch, wait for me to walk by, then leap out and scratch the s*** out of my legs.
    My rescue mutts would never.
    Team dog.Report

    1. Also Team Dog. Although some dogs are assholes (and were probably made that way by asshole humans who mistreated them as puppies), the vast majority of dogs are very eager to please their people and as a result are generally just doofuses. Adorable doofuses.

      Cats? Some cats are sweet and loving. Some cats are aloof and demanding. And some cats are actually psychotic. This seems less to do with how well treated they were by humans as kittens, and more the product of their personalities and/or mental disorders. You do not want a cat with too rich of an inner life.Report

  2. Cats don’t slobber or bark. Their fur doesn’t make your hands greasy. They purr. I’m sorry if a mistreated cat scratched and bit you. Mistreated dogs kill children. Cats!Report

  3. Toxoplasmosis isn’t that bad, really. It’s got upsides, anyway.

    And falling asleep with one of them under your hand? I can’t imagine falling asleep any other way.Report

    1. Until it randomly decides it no longer wants to be touched , and instead of just… moving away, like a sensible creature, sinks its teeth into you instead.Report

  4. Of all God’s creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.
    – Notebook, 1894Report

    1. A misconception…you didn’t train your dog not to poop in the house. Your dog trained you to take it out daily, rain or shine, to leave its crap on the neighbor’s lawn (or, ick, pick the stuff up with a baggie.) A well-tended cat’s litterbox in an out-of-the-way corner is a once-a-week hassle. No fuss. No muss. Cats!Report

  5. My wife and I are both animal lovers, but she came into the relationship preferring dogs and I’ve always been more of a cat person. When we bought our first house and figured we would be settled there a while (over three decades ago), we got a cat and a dog from the shelter.

    Since then we’ve had about 10 other cats (multiples at a time, largely due to the cat distribution system) and no other dogs — the main issue for us was mainly that dogs have to be walked, even when it’s 10 below outside, and my wife left those freezing walks to me to take on. Also our dog was quite protective with us and hostile to other dogs, which caused us a decent amount of hassle.

    Dogs are fine but cats are (mostly) easy. And we’ve been lucky to have a lot of very friendly lap cats. We did have one foisted on us who terrorized the kids and the other cats, but we were able to pass her along to a cat-free family after a few months, where she was a lot happier.Report

  6. Domestic cats kill on the order of a billion songbirds per year, just in the US. It’s easy to tell you’ve moved into a neighborhood with a thriving feral cat colony because there are no squirrels or other small rodents, and no songbirds.Report

    1. When I owned a house on the NW side of Chicago, there was a feral cat colony nearby. They must have been terrible hunters because we had birds aplenty (yay!) and squirrels galore (BOO! I used to take potshots at them with my son’s BB gun. I knew it wouldn’t do anything, but it gave me great satisfaction.)Report

  7. I grew up with dogs and during my marriage we had a dog. When my youngest and I moved to Florida she talked me into getting a cat. Cats and Dogs both have their points, but cats are much less maintenance.

    The cat is a true emotional support animal for her so I’m really glad we got him. He fits our current lifestyle better because we don’t have a yard.Report

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