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So Aestu, are you saying that cats are better than dogs? If so, I agree with you - though I like dogs.


I like the independence of cats, I think it means more if they like you...as dogs generally like everybody and everything.

Actually, this thread has reminded me of this amusing picture I saw earlier last week.

USD's hit list is growing longer with this thread.

I think Aestu thinks all dogs are like labs : [, IE mouth breathers slobering around that like anyone and anything. If you want to enjoy having any kind of pet getting "smart" breeds is key. My folks used to breed and show Rhodesian Ridgebacks and they basically just treated us like part of the pack, its up to the owner to make sure he is the alpha in said pack though. They were great dogs to have around they were very defensive of the house but they weren't super barky, they would make noise to let my folks know that someone was here and then they would shut up. They had great intellect, they needed it as they were originally lion hunting dogs.


I will say though I think our horse's were as smart as any animal can be and I miss them the most : [ When they broke out of there pasture(if grass or a tree branch or something touch's electric fencing it will ground out and they could feel the electricity in the air when it was working and just straight up walk through the fence when it wasn't) the younger one would just run in circles around the house and her mother would walk up the stairs onto our deck and watch us watching TV/eating what ever just hanging out with us and the above mentioned dogs. What I don't miss is that they always tried to steal my Graham crackers : { They used to scare me when I was little because they would never break out when my dad was home they would wait for him to go to work and then pop through the fence and just hang around, like they would break through the fence then be hanging out on there side of it and then when you go outside they would just come running to hang out see what you were doing, was kinda freaky as a six year old "gulp".


As far as cats go, I have not had or met a single house cat that I liked but I did like our outdoor cats, they came in the house and stuff but it wasn't an all day all night kind of thing and yes cats are territorial > <. My brothers cat had kittens and I was able to have one for myself I named him fluffy because he was fluffy and I was like 5 he stayed around the house with us for a couple of years and then he "moved out" but he would still come by a few times a year and scare the shit out of all the other cats(chase them up trees to show them who was boss). One of the kittens from my brothers cats first litter we gave to my grandmother and he spent the next 10 years fighting other cats in Boston(he looked awesome, he was like huge like 18lbs and his ears were pinned forward from the street combat)before they retired to there farm in Maine and he lived to be 21 which surprised us all because usually outdoor cats get lunched by something :{


I'm bored on patch day and I miss my pets more then I thought > <

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I lol'd. It's about 10% accurate.

The important thing to understand is, again:
Dogs are designed to accept an unequal relationship with humans. Cats are not.

Cats see themselves as prisoners only when the relationship is not established on mutual terms. I mentioned how the cat reacted to first being taken to our home. Cat manuals advise the family to sit with the new kitten for a moment, once it has calmed down. The kitten then understands that this is now its family. It's remarkable - there's this moment where the kitten's head bobs; you can actually see the mental switch flick.

The writer of that satire is obviously a dog person who felt compelled to own other pets without understanding how they differ from dogs. Cats, unlike dogs, can be allowed to enter and leave the house freely, and they will return of their own volition, without getting lost or disturbing neighbors. They don't need to be kept indoors.

Cats have ego, and intensely dislike being taunted or put upon. Cats do enjoy ball games, but the game has to be played on the cat's terms. When the cat has had enough, the activity must stop. If the cat isn't in the mood to play, don't force it. Cats don't see themselves as existing for human amusement and don't like being annoyed.

Basically, it sounds like this satire is based on this guy's experience owning a cat that hated him because he didn't give the cat the respect it wanted.

Cats are in most respects far better designed than dogs. Pound for pound, they are stronger and more agile. They have better hearing and eyesight. I'm not so sure about their sense of smell. They are smarter - they have greater powers of social, tactical and spatial reasoning. They can survive falls that would be lethal to a dog, and they have a better homing sense. They can carry out personal hygiene (which makes them more resistant to infection). They are more resistant to thirst and starvation (their droppings contain less water). Their bodies are also much more efficient - they can consciously move their ears individually to listen in a certain direction, and even their tongues are designed to make use of every centimeter of available space. Nothing in their design is wasted - the entire body plan is a study in efficient elegance.

The satire does allude to one very important strength of cats. They have far greater physical discipline than dogs. Cats don't gorge themselves. They eat what they need and leave the rest for later. The cat's capacity for self-discipline is closely linked to its sense of ego: that which makes it a worthwhile companion.

A dog's strengths are its sense of smell, its ability to work as part of a team, and its ability to comprehend human speech.

Cats are tone deaf at low octaves, and because they are intensely emotional creatures they do not understand the human convention of assigning meaning to specific sounds. This is why feline mimicry of human speech reflects the cat's perception of it - it sounds like a staccato trill, all they hear is the general tone and not the specific sounds.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

This got me.

I believe you mean Norwegian Ridgeback.

And for the record, cats are perfectly capable of being obese. Cats who understand that food is readily available will eat far more than necessary.

If destruction exists, we must destroy everything.
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Slaad Shrpk Breizh

I hate pets and kids which i have no right to discipline.

oh god rofl
i hurt from all the laughing

rhodesian ridgeback is an actual breed, girl i used to see had two.

My aunt's cat was so fat it couldn't scratch by its tail. It would reach back to try, spin a bit, and fall over. It was hilarious. If I dig up a picture, expect to see this thread bumped even if its dead by then.

s^ | Kay

Except dogs are realistically more highly evolved as they have achieved a useful role in a human-dominated world where cats basically only exist at our whim.

Cats do apparently have better hearing but eyesight is deeply up for debate. Smell I think is super-dependent on breed. Blood hounds can obviously out-smell a cat but I'm not as sure when it comes to poodles. Dogs have greater potential there but if we lump all cats and all dogs together(which is stupid), maybe cats come out on top for sense of smell. Cats have better night vision but dogs have better peripheral vision, how does either of those make their overall eye 'score' better than the others?

They are 'smarter'? You're just talking out your ass there since you're offering no basis for your CROSS-SPECIES INTELLIGENCE COMPARISON. Cats are without a doubt less social than dogs so what great social power do they posses? Does the animal that's independent have more social intelligence than the one that can integrate seamlessly with other dogs and humans? No. No it does not. Pretty much the opposite. Tactical intelligence? I'm having trouble discerning your meaning here. Are they more dexterous with their paws? Yes. Does that make them more intelligent? No.

Falling thing and homing thing are true. They do clean themselves when dogs don't, it makes logical sense to me that this would help prevent infection but I wasn't able to find comparative data on cat vs dog infections or whatever. I had trouble finding good information on dehydration (mostly things like this gem: "Dehydration in cats is dangerous, and if not treated, can lead to death"), what I found was cats need .6-.8 oz of water per pound per day and dogs need between .5 and 1 oz per pound per day. The dog one seemed consistent through multiple sources and didn't find as much on the cat, but overall the data feels flimsy so I'm not arguing this point hard(nor necessarily just accepting your assertion). I've already agreed to better ears, you're repeating yourself there. Tongue is an interesting discussion because while the cat's is used for grooming the dog's is used for regulating body heat, so they both serve purpose beyond taste.


My point is certainly not that dogs are better than cats, just that the assertion that cats are better designed is somewhat silly. It's like saying humans are better designed than ants. Why are we? Because we built cars and all that? Our design might be more complex than an ant's but it doesn't make it better. The creatures with the real worse designs are the ones that died off. Saying any species is better designed than another when they are both flourishing in the world requires a much more lengthy and in-depth discussion. Especially when generalizing all cats and all dogs when breed plays a huge role for both's abilities. If a cat is stronger pound for pound does that matter? Ants are stronger milligram for milligram, so what? I'm sure a dedicated dog lover could come up with a dozen things dogs are better at, just like you did for cats.

Some of your assertions are factual and fine(better hearing, falling, homing) while others are opinion(intelligence, better designed). Arguing that they are a better pet or a more enjoyable companion is fine because in the end that comes down to opinion, it's unlikely that you'll get someone to waver on their position there. Arguing they are the better/smarter species is insane without some set criteria and testing methods, which no one in the world has satisfyingly established for cats vs dogs so far.

Drominar, Petrous, Chronowrench

Yet they exist, do they not?

And even now, cats can survive far better without humans than dogs. Life may be hard for a stray cat, but a stray dog won't last long. There are even stray cat colonies in some abandoned areas.



The cat eye possesses a number of refinements the dog eye doesn't that are completely advantageous, such as the third eyelid and full-color vision.

The best analogy is comparing the brain of a human to the brain of a cat or a dog. The fact that dogs and cats have certain narrow advantages doesn't change the fact that the human brain is a more complex and more highly evolved organ with greater overall capabilities.

The objective proof - is that cats are useful to science for visual experimentation and dogs are not.



I would make the sociopath's argument here.

Cats also exhibit much greater complexity in their relationships with other beings - dogs tend to see relationships in terms of a strict hierarchy or friend vs foe - cats have a wider grey area and more flexibility in their responses. Example: how cats deal with individual humans and cats they dislike but are forced to coexist with.

Cats also have a highly reputed ability to identify the disposition of a stranger before any interaction takes place. They are just that good at reading body language.



There is a reason we use the metaphor "cat-and-mouse".

Mice are small, but they are incredibly intelligent and resourceful creatures. They are mentally closer to humans and cats than they are to dogs or horses. Catching a mouse requires formidable tactical skills.

Dogs of all shapes and sizes find this feat impossible.


Both cats and dogs (and humans) occasionally are afflicted by polydactyly, and none of these species' mental wiring is optimized to support the condition.

Cats, however, are sufficiently intelligent and flexible that they can creatively find utility in a condition they do not have instincts for. Dogs cannot.

This isn't just my saying so, there's actually objective proof. Here in Boston, feral cats have been established for a very long time, since they served humans as mousers on Pilgrim ships. Polydactyly has become a disproportionately common trait in the Boston cat gene pool because cats that are born with it also have the intelligence to make use of it. There is no comparable example of dog creativity.

Dogs cannot create ingress or egress from a building without human assistance as easily as a cat despite having comparable size and strength. The ability to creatively solve problems and make plans are practical examples of intelligence.



Cat feces vs dog feces.



That's my point - it's more elegant, more efficient, to use every ounce of meat, every centimeter of space, for as many purposes as possible.

The best analogy is the hammer with a nail puller on the back versus the hammer without. Sure they're both equally good at pounding nails in. But the one that uses an otherwise non-functional surface for something else is the more refined instrument.



I would argue that ants are physically much better designed than humans.



I'm looking at it from an engineering point of view. Crappy products survive all the time in the "jungle" of the market, sometimes simply because there aren't the creative or selective processes in play to refine the design, even if an improved design would clear the floor. It's a lot easier to identify wasted space and areas of potential improvement with the engineering of a dog than it is the engineering of a cat.

The best analogy would be comparing the VW Bug to the Ford Escort.

Cats can thrive in many more ecosystems than dogs, and can survive environmental changes (e.g., urbanization and desertification) that wipe out feral dogs.



What would you say to the examples and logic I laid out?

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

My other dog has this ability, which is weird because she is basically retarded in every other sense of the word. We have had plenty of people over that are good people and she's fine with them. There are others who have turned out in the end to be really horrible people. Somehow she sensed this, because she just smells people when they walk in usually. The few that turned out shitty, she's bitten the second they walk through the door. The only exception she made was for my grandfather, but she must've sensed he was necessary in our house (he owned it) so she just barked at him nonstop - sometimes for hours - until he left.

There was even one time that a guy she'd met on numerous occasions came over to start shit with his gf's ex who was staying with us and she bit him then. She was fine with him every other time before and after.

s^ | Kay

One of my dogs is like this. My asshole friend comes over, first time, and she's barking and howling hair on end.

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