Katz vs. Dawgs

Nick is a dog owner. He owns a large, hairy dog. And this is the first time in my adult life that I have had the chance to closely study the behaviour pattern of dogs. Yesterday I had the opportunity to take Nick's dog for an hour's walk, and discovered that dogs are very, very different to cats. Very different.

Cats always go to the toilet in the same place, and bury their shit, piss, whatever, in kitty-gritty. The owner (e.g. me) merely has to get a pooper-scooper, remove the deeds, and throw it away. One can clean up kitty-shitty on auto-pilot, or totally hung over, coz they always shit in the same place. Dogs on the other hand shit whenever and wherever they feel like taking a dump; whether it is on the pavement, on someone's front garden, or even in front of a restaurant. If a dog wants to crap itself, it will. The owner therefore has to walk around with a bag of shit while the dog happily continues on its search for another location to take a dump.

Cats have an acute sense of smell. They use their olifactory senses to make sure that they do not eat rotten food, or to go anywhere near smelly things like fecal matters of other species. Dogs too have an acute sense of smell, however, they use this hightened sense to search out smelly items, like other dogs' shit, or dead cats, and get a really GOOD whiff of it. They sometimes even rub their body parts in smelly things so they can take the stench back to their homes.

Cats do not like to get their fur dirty or wet. They spend a good part of their waking day grooming and cleaning their coat. This is true for both indoor and outdoor cats, but in particular indoor cats are very fastidious about maintaining the condition of their fur. Cat owners of course can assist their feline friends and brush them, but in general cats can take care of themselves. Dogs on the other hand (if they could) would make the most out of their days trying to get their coats as filthy as possible. The wetter and the muddier the better. It is almost as if dogs wear wet mud on their fur as we women wear make-up on our faces. Muddy Dog = effort at looking attrative to the opposite sex. However, just like with some women, make up, or no make up, a dog is still a dog.

Cats require vertical exercise and therefore their linear territory on a map is usually small. Castrated male cats in general hang around a territory no bigger than 400m in diameter, and of course a feline "stud" will have his harem within approximately 2km sq. Cats are often seen on people's car bonnets, walls, even on roof tops, which is a very sweet site. Yesterday I was soooooo happy to find out that dogs do not exhibit these feline traits, and that they require *horizontal* exercise , i.e. dogs stay on the ground. I would have been at a complete loss if Nick's big, hairy dog started to climb onto people's homes; that dog would surely put a hole in someone's roof, and I know it would have been a peculiar site had the dog decided to take a dump right there and then.