Confessions of a Male Cat Lover
I love pussy. Black pussy, white pussy, orange pussy. Long haired pussy, bristly pussy. Pussy that licks your face to wake you up before running downstairs to stare at birds out of your kitchen window. Oh, sorry. I should clarify that I love cats. Although TNG Allison has compared her bajingo to an actual kitten for its cleanliness and temperament, my experiences with the feline far overwhelm my dealings with the Yoni.
I know most guys are supposed to be dog people, and I guess I can see the advantages. If you want something slobbery and affectionate that will follow you around 24/7, a dog is your dream come true. But imagine for a second that your golden retriever was actually some guy off Craigslist that was renting your spare bedroom. Would you want a housemate who yelled monosyllables at you for hours on end until you scratched his neck? Would you want to share your living quarters with a human being who depended on you guide him through a park so that he didn't release his bowels on your hardwood floors? Would you think it was OK to have any acquaintance follow you into the bathroom? Then why the hell would you want a dog?
Cats are more my speed. It's like having a friend that's comfortable sitting in silence with you. That might sit on the other end of the couch while you watch a movie, but then spend the next couple hours in his room reading. A friend who is there if you really need him, but isn't going to be too terribly upset if you don't see him for a couple days.
Male cat lovers don't exactly have it easy, though. Someone decided that boys are supposed to like dogs and girls are supposed to like cats. So that attracts enough grief. But when you have a gay boy who likes cats it's like people expect it. "Of course you like cats... because you're basically a woman." I don't know if lesbians with big dogs experience the same sort of idiocy, but it wouldn't surprise me. (And either way, neither group has the ignominious distinction of being a man with a small dog. Those little critters have all the visual appeal of a possum, with the soothing vocal tendencies of an organ grinder.)
My favorite thing about cats is this: The reasons I love them are the same reasons that most people hate them. You say they're aloof, I say they're reserved. You say snobby, I say graceful. You say they shit in a box and you keep it in your house... OK, I don't have a counter for that one. It's a small price to pay.
Cat's are self-sufficient. You feed a dog too much and it's belly will rupture. Too little and it dies. Who needs that kind of responsibility? Cats generally stop eating when they are full, and if they're not full they'll go onto your patio and eat vermin. And if they don't actually consume the filthy pests, they'll leave them on your bedroom floor as a gift. I can't actually say that I would had any uses for the dead robins my childhood cat used to leave for me, but I was flattered at the thought. And I feel a strange kinship with any creature self-centered enough to assume that you find the same objects valuable, but generous enough to give them to you anyway.
My personal favorite cat habit is being nice to people that don't like them. If you have ten people in a room and the cat won't leave one of them alone, it's safe to assume the recipient of all the attention either can't stand cats or is so allergic to them that his esophagus is closing up and he can't voice his objections.
And all these justifications aside? Cats are really cute. The cutest, in fact. They're friendly and fuzzy and if I'm lucky they'll sit in my lap and purr. How many friends can you say that about?
7 comments:
YES! I'm so glad you posted this.
I can see why people are more open to dogs; hey are widely used in our society: seeing-eye dogs, police dogs, time-traveling-historian dogs (Wishbone).
Cats, however, are the perfect animals for people living in a city apartment. It's true we may never see a seeing-eye cat, but that's because cats are more self aware, and do what they want.
In conclusion, my cat is IN LOVE with Zack. They might form a civil union. The first gay-human-cat union.
i love both, and can barely maintain any sort of composure in the presence of particularly cute specimens. that said, i've had woefully bad experiences with pets of any variety.
here's a chronological list:
rabbit. charlotte. poisoned by my uncle while i was visiting my grandmother in utah (beet greens are poisonous to rabbits? really? this still doesn't seem right to me).
husky. sasha. stolen, evidently. she'd never run away before though. again this doesn't seem possible, but i was never offered any other explanation.
cat. popeye. didn't actually die per se. i did push him off the sundeck at three years old, apparently due to my budding sociopathic tendencies. anyway, popeye was never quite the same. i still feel deeply guilty about this.
cat. bert. taken as prey by a bald eagle, before my very eyes. no one believes this when i say it. it's true though.
cat. ernie. poisoned by antifreeze. at least we think that's what got him. ironically, he drank it right before it snowed a couple feet and we didn't find him until it all melted. just a stiff orange paw sticking out of the snow. you can imagine the psychological fall-out from that one.
husky. tashi (stupid name i know). antisocial behaviour. we couldn't keep her because she just wouldn't stop eating the neighbour's chickens. like, every other day she'd come home covered in chicken blood. also she liked to eat garden slugs that would get stuck on the roof of her mouth, and she'd freak out every time. never learned. weird. she went to a nice home (this time i actually KNOW this to be true)
rabbit. rusty. torn to shreds by aforementioned neighbour's dog. retribution for the chickens? still, this one really hurt.
iguana. harry houdini. truthfully, i was just never very impressed by him. i gave him to a third grade class as a pet and he promptly absconded (i didn't call him that for nothing.) i was told though, that he attacked several third graders before staging his daring escape (go harry!).
cat. old rotten. cancer. cats can get cancer too. the only remarkable thing about this case is that old rotten was only posthumously named as such. he just showed up at our door one day and never left, so a la holly golightly we never named him. just called him cat. sometimes kitty. before he actually passed though, he got pretty stinky. actually, real stinky. he will forever be remembered as old rotten.
black lab, chloe, congenital hemophilia. we barely knew ye.
this list isn't even exhaustive. it's almost as if someone in my family was secretly murdering all out pets, but i can't believe this to be true. i mean, an eagle? you can't premeditate that.
i really want to get a puppy, but it doesn't look good for said puppy's future.
um, Adam's comment is my favorite in blog-comment history.
my girlfriend also has crazy pet stories like this as a result of growing up on a farm in Illinois.
The following are her stories, verbatim:
"My dog angel, a samoyed, got stuck in my grandparents' PTO shaft, then shot in the head by my brother old yeller style.
gerbil. joe montana, cooked to death in his own plastic house one summer day when my mother put him outside because he smelled so horrible.
angus. a cow that we butchered and ate even though he was the cutest black cow you've ever seen. He had a little cow fro and everything. He was good steak too.
cat. simba. he was mauled by the neighbor's dog and had to be euthanized because my parents wouldn't spring for a back leg cart for him
a gecko, spot. let him out in the eighth grade science lab and he was never seen from again"
She forgot to include the story of her dog Deiter, a mini doxen who was stolen by two lesbians in her apartment building.
Goodness, after reading these comments, I'm glad I grew up in the suburbs. My family's pets all died of old age. By the way, I'm a cat person, too. Zack, your counter for the litter thing is that cat litter goes out with the garbage, whereas if you have a dog you have to walk down the street carrying feces every single day for the rest of its life.
your hypothetical puppy is MINE!
Love it! I always thought xkcd summed it up nicely:
http://xkcd.com/231/
Post a Comment