Lara Marlowe: "Even the ordinary alley cat is innately elegant"
The new BBC series Cats Vs Dogs: Which Is Best? purports to offer scientific answers to the question that its title asks, based on criteria such as night vision, agility and endurance. But, deep inside, we all know that our preference for felines or canines is not about science: it's about instinct.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should state that I have been the proud owner of five cats in as many decades and that I do not understand how people can live without the quiet company, humour, playfulness and affection of a cat.
I will make the politically correct statement that I like all animals except snakes and insects. Many of my friends are deeply attached to their dogs, and I respect that. But, hey, there really is no question about the superiority of felines.
A study published last year in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that felids – the cat family – have helped push 40 species of dogs into extinction. They were in competition for the same sources of food, but cats had retractable claws. In contrast, canids didn't drive a single cat species out of business.
"Kelb kelb wa pussein pussein," ("A dog is a dog and a cat is a cat") a Lebanese friend used to say. And never the twain shall meet. In my estimation they differ in four fundamental ways: hygiene, intelligence, character and aesthetics.
I said earlier that I like dogs. From a distance. Outdoors. In the country. I'm appalled by dogs kept in city apartments. They smell bad. They leave tonnes of unpleasantness – referred to as déjections canines by Paris city officials – on pavements.
The only thing more revolting than seeing a human scooping up dog poo with a plastic bag is when the dog owner looks the other way, as if the creature at the end of the lead had nothing to do with him, then leaves the malodorous pile for the next pedestrian to step on.
Baudelaire sang the praises of cats in a sonnet known to every French person. Cats are the “pride of the house . . . friends of knowledge and sensual pleasures”. When cats think they “take on the dreaming noble attitudes” of sphinxes with magic sparks in their eyes.
Feline intelligence is infused with mystery. Anyone who has looked into a cat’s green eyes has felt a connection with something as ineffable as a reincarnated soul.
Then there is character. It is often claimed that dogs are affectionate and cats are not. But a dog’s affection is all panting, tail-wagging excitement. Dogs love with the undignified hunger of an insecure lover.
A cat lets you know how extremely fortunate you are to receive his affection, which will be meted out according to whim.
With the possible exception of the greyhound, as in the portraits of Lady Lavery, dogs are not elegant. Bulldogs, pit bulls, dachshunds and chihuahas are downright ugly.
Even the ordinary alley cat is innately elegant. This extends to their toilette and table manners. Dogs gulp food and slurp water. Cats eat daintily. And when they seem to lap water they are in fact using that little pink tongue as a funnel.
Pablo Neruda's Cat's Dream is one of my favourite poems. "How neatly a cat sleeps, / sleeps with its paws and its posture / sleeps with its wicked claws / and with its unfeeling blood . . . I should like to sleep like a cat / with all the fur of time / with a tongue rough as flint / with the dry sex of fire."
Cats have Baudelaire and Neruda. Dogs have White Fang, Rin Tin Tin and Lassie.
The second episode of the BBC series, next Thursday, asks whether cats and dogs really love us. Again, the question seems silly. We know they do, but what really matters is that we love them.
Karlin Lillington: 'Dogs are the merry, devoted, intelligent best'
Oh my. Are they all yours? How do you manage?"
My partner and I rarely complete a leisurely amble around the local park without getting stopped at least once by strangers. Sometimes they have one or two of their own.
Occasionally, just for the fun of watching a face morph from startled to alarmed in a nanosecond, I’ll cheerfully reply, “And there are even more at home.”
Dogs, of course. Dogs.
Big ones and small ones. Fluffy ones and smooth ones. Elderly ones, elegantly grey muzzled and browed, as hard of hearing as an old codger on a corner stool in a pub. Young ones that chase dilapidated tennis balls into the sea and relish a stinking piece of dried tripe the way a connoisseur would sniff and happily sigh over a glass of vintage Lynch-Bages.
Some people have one or two. We have . . . well, let me see. Currently seven, down from 10 just over a year ago (the heartbreaking side of having a gang of much-loved seniors, so wonderfully full of character in their dotage but on limited retirement time). We also have a foster dog (what’s one more?).
We love dogs. We like cats, yes (we have three), but we love dogs. We both grew up with them.
I refer to us as the Brady Bunch of Dogs, even though he brought one to the relationship and I brought, er, four. Then it was five. Then six. All Cavalier King Charles spaniels, most of them rescue dogs. (Since I set up Irish Cavalier Rescue, more than a decade ago, we have taken in and rehomed a couple of hundred little cavaliers.)
When we realised that we had a house full of aging but moderately active dogs – an incongruous mix of Alsatians and cavaliers – we knew it was time to add a youngster. (Wouldn’t you?) Of course – long hairy story short – one became two. And, fulfilling a decades-long wish of mine, they are Pyrenean mountain dogs, a collective, deep-woofing, goofy yet regal 200-plus pounds of them.
So there’s hair. (We’ve a Dyson and a Miele forming a laughable defence.) There are muddy paws, sea-wet body shakes, the occasional indoor accident (that’s what tile floors are for), cacophonous barking from cavaliers wanting breakfast, hopeful demands for ball throwing from the Alsatian, and acres of outstretched sleeping Pyreneans, like deep-breathing polar-bear rugs.
When we needed a new car we brought an extra-large cage around to the dealerships, to measure the interiors for multiple-dog transport, and chose a model based on optimum canine capacity (a Hyundai Santa Fe).
I cannot imagine a home without a dog. That’s merely a house. A sterile, hair-free, too-quiet, wagless desert, lacking pink tummies waiting to be rubbed and a row of earnest fuzzy faces peering out of the front window, waiting for your return.
Dogs are just the best. The merry, devoted, intelligent, humorous, empathetic, forgiving best. A cat is a noble friend, indeed, and completes a home in a different way. But dogs! Only dogs provide that unique form of joyful yet meditative companionship as you traverse the moors or a beach.
Ever loyal, they wake each day ready for whatever you want to do. Every day is a perfect start for them, full of promise, adventure, friendship, silliness. And you. They are a daily reminder of how to live a good life.
That’s why dogs are the best. And why I agree with the American cowboy humorist and actor Will Rogers, who said: “If there are no dogs in heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.”
Me too. And, hey, dogs: I’ll have tennis balls and dried-tripe chews when I get there.
