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News-Sentinel.com Your Town. Your Voice.
Opening Arguments

Cat attack

I hope Dutch and Maggie don't see this. They're sensitive creatures, and discovering they're not adored could send them into a funk for a week:

Clearly, there are dog people and there are cat people. But it's not much of a contest: 74 percent of people like dogs a lot, and only 41 percent like cats a lot.

Cats win the dislike vote handily, according to an Associated Press-Petside.com poll. Fifteen percent of the adults questioned said they disliked cats a lot while the number who said they disliked dogs a lot was just 2 percent.

Actually, this story, which is patently absurd, is a good illustration of why the press is so disliked today. Why ask people whether they like dogs or cats better when you can just count the dogs and cats and find out which ones people have more of? I remember reading a few years ago that the number of cats had passed the number of dogs in this country. I checked the blogosphere and, sure enough, cats still rule. Here's just one account, with 2005-2006 figures:

New figures just released from APPMA's 2005-2006 National Pet Owners Survey (NPOS) show pet ownership is currently at its highest level, with 63 percent of all U.S. households owning a pet which equates to more than 69 million households. That's up from 64 million in 2002 and 51 million in 1988 when APPMA's tracking began.

According to the 375 page survey that tracks hundreds of pet ownership trends, Americans own approximately 73 million dogs, 90 million cats, 139 million freshwater fish, 9 million saltwater fish, 16 million birds, 18 million small animals and 11 million reptiles.

That's 90 million cats and 73 million dogs. Wouldn't that fact make a better story than some lame poll designed to find and reinforce the writer's own prejudices? Dogs are friendly, people-pleasing pets, and cats are aloof and self-involved. That's the narrative, by God, and they're sticking to it, no matter what. Or perhaps the poll is true, and cat owners are just more neurotic than dog owners. We hate the damn things, but we keep one or two around anyway just to feel good about being aggravated all the time.

11 million reptiles? Whew. This country may be even stranger than some of us had supposed.

Comments

Bob G.
Thu, 01/07/2010 - 10:19am

Leo:'
Having owned a myriad of pets over the years, I think the fact we love dogs is that they're (stupidly) loyal...
As for the cats...maybe any "dislike" stems from the fact that they all too often remind us of other people...or ourselves.
Wanna do a twosome and hit the gov't up for a GRANT to study this?
I think we could snag about $300K...apiece!

;)

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