Cats vs Dogs

[shakeybrainsurgeon]

You get what you give. It takes more work to train a cat, but they're a lot smarter than most give them credit for.

Case in point: Harry the Amazing Fetch Cat

Harry in action: www.chuckelliot.com/Movies/harry.wmv

This is sort of like damning with faint praise. Chevy used to run a TV ad for the defunct Nova showing a woman driving the car and her boyfriend asking her, incredulously, why she drives a Nova. She replies with a pained look "well, it's a good car for the money"

Wall Street Journal rated it the worst TV ad of the year, in that it basically said "it's garbage, but what do you want for that price?"

Every animal is smarter than we realize... slime mold, colonies of amoeba, can be trained to run a maze... an ant colony, when fed sugar water for a month, stops sending out foraging parties, in effect "learning" that it has an easy food supply and can thus conserve energy... an orangutan in a metropolitan zoo picked locks with a paperclip he kept under his lip, so the zookeepers wouldn't find it. In general, however, severely domesticated animals tend to be dumber, unless, like some dog varieties, they have been bred for brains. A domesticated turkey bred for white meat is so stupid it has to be taught how to drink.

 

[shakeybrainsurgeon]

By the way, that is a cute cat and a neat trick... for a cat

 

[eckybay]

Harry's a cutie. My Willow-cat use to play fetch. He would only play with the yellow mousie toy. Well, the yellow mouse got lost many years ago, and Willow-cat will no longer play fetch. Still makes a good lap warmer though. I always had dogs growing up and was amazed to find out that cats will come when called and are a lot more trainable than commonly given credit for.

 

[plot]

I have to take care of a dog.

A cat I can leave extra food and water and leave for weeks at a time.

 

[shakeybrainsurgeon]

A cat doesn't frighten away intruders when you are away. A cat isn't happy to see you when you return, either. So its six of one, half-dozen of the other, so to speak

 

[plot]

Yea but... I don't really have to take care of it.

 

[fairybasslet]

A cat isn't happy to see you when you return, either.

You're kidding me, right? You obviously have never owned a cat. Or else, if you did, you were probably so mean to it it danced for joy when you left for work in the morning.

 

[RonDawg]

Are they effective work dogs?

One just caught a burglar last night, three hours after he was last spotted.

Another, who is cross-trained on dope, hit on a car that resulted in a multi-million dollar drug seizure a few weeks back.

So yeah, I would say they are effective.

Much of a K9's effectiveness also has to do with the abilities of the handler. A great dog, paired up with a lousy handler, makes for a lousy K9 team.

 

[shakeybrainsurgeon]

You're kidding me, right? You obviously have never owned a cat. Or else, if you did, you were probably so mean to it it danced for joy when you left for work in the morning.

I have owned cats most of my life, and i could never tell when they were happy about anything. Oh, they purr and rub up against us, but right now my cat is doing likewise to the computer screen. It must love this flatscreen. I love animals, but they are just that, animals. People read too much into animal behavior, extrapolating their behaviors in a Ouija board fashion.

How can one be mean to a cat? Beat it with a newspaper? Several cat owners have already said they simply leave a bowl of food and water out when they go away on vacation... now that's mean. Nothing hits the spot like week old water and dried out food. And what if there is a fire? When we leave, someone checks on our cat every other day.

Will someone please send me a video of a cat dancing for joy.

"a cat has the same expression on its face all the time, it could be watching a moth or witnessing you being ax murdered, its all the same to him..." George Carlin

And how about the cat owners who let their cats roam the neighborhood to get the stuffings beat out of them by other cats, or get disease, or freeze. Or end up on yet another "have you seen fluffy" flier stapled to the telephone poles of America.

And the cat owners who have their cats declawed, which is really amputating their digits, to preserve the sofa legs.Or the owners who dress puff-puff in funny little clothes?

 

[agilis]

A cat isn't happy to see you? Shakey, cats are smart enough to know a brain scooper when they see one.

My cats know the sound of my car as it turns into my street, watch from the window until I park, then run to the door, rolling on the floor, vocalizing, and, yes, dancing with evident joy. They follow me from room to room. Each knows its name and comes when called, and both go for long outdoor walks with me, never straying more than a few feet away. This only works when they are walked individually. Trying to make it a threesome never works, for some reason. Probably sibling rivalry. Though brother and sister, they have very different personalities. One is friendly to everyone, while the other is totally a one-person cat. Both are extremely smart, frighteningly intuitive, and better company than most people one encounters.