Amen!!!
When I was boarding the same attitude about the barn cats. It was OK for your dogs to come out and chase them, eat their food, knock over their water??? So when I left I took the cats with me. I was the one that bought their food and paid their vet bills so I decided that meant that they were my cats. A few months after I left the barn burned down. I was so happy that the cats were safe at my house and no longer there. No way I was going to leave them behind!
[QUOTE=SusanO;8876182]
Amen!!!
When I was boarding the same attitude about the barn cats. It was OK for your dogs to come out and chase them, eat their food, knock over their water??? So when I left I took the cats with me. I was the one that bought their food and paid their vet bills so I decided that meant that they were my cats. A few months after I left the barn burned down. I was so happy that the cats were safe at my house and no longer there. No way I was going to leave them behind![/QUOTE]
You’re my hero! 
[QUOTE=SusanO;8876182]
Amen!!!
When I was boarding the same attitude about the barn cats. It was OK for your dogs to come out and chase them, eat their food, knock over their water??? So when I left I took the cats with me. I was the one that bought their food and paid their vet bills so I decided that meant that they were my cats. A few months after I left the barn burned down. I was so happy that the cats were safe at my house and no longer there. No way I was going to leave them behind![/QUOTE]
You’re my hero!
I get really annoyed when people say that a friendly, outgoing cat is acting “like a dog.” My cats are sweet, loyal, friendly, snuggle, lovable, playful and all around awesome and so are a zillion other cats and they are acting like CATS! This comparison just perpetuates the stereotype that dogs are better than cats and a great cat is about the same as your average dog. They are different, but the standoffish, aloof, mean cat stereotype is the exception…and in my opinion often a result of how a cat has been treated or raised.I donate to cat rescues in addition to the Humane Society. And I’m thankful I have a fantastic cat only vet just down the street from me.
[QUOTE=Kachina;8875716]
I wish that there were more cat specific veterinary practices. I run into the rare vet or tech occasionally who has more, or even as much of an affinity for cats than/as dogs, and it really makes a difference. They don’t immediately go into autoscruff mode and they take their time assessing temperament and tolerance level.[/QUOTE]
We have 2 cat-only clinics (hospitals) here in Ottawa and they both run a pretty busy shop.
I’m a cat person and have to agree that they so often get a bad rap. None of mine are declawed and our furniture is just fine, they use their scratching posts.
[QUOTE=SusanO;8876182]
Amen!!!
When I was boarding the same attitude about the barn cats. It was OK for your dogs to come out and chase them, eat their food, knock over their water??? So when I left I took the cats with me. I was the one that bought their food and paid their vet bills so I decided that meant that they were my cats. A few months after I left the barn burned down. I was so happy that the cats were safe at my house and no longer there. No way I was going to leave them behind![/QUOTE]
Yes!! You ROCK!!
Also, same thing. I have 6 in the house, and no problems with clawing, and no one is declawed.
I have an old wooden stool, and another two scratching posts. No problems at all with the furniture.
One has to look no further than history books, religion, and more recently - pop culture and media, to see why cats have this reputation. It’s completely unfounded, but it’s deeply entrenched in our history and culture.
With the exception of the ancient Egyptians, almost every civilization in history regarded cats as nuisances, disease-spreaders or Satanic minions. Preposterous. But a very difficult reputation to shed. :no:
With the advent of movies, story books, TV, this was perpetuated even further and all too often we see the dog as the hero and the cat as the antagonist or, at best, the grumpy, aloof sidekick.
This is why I am so tickled that my toddler’s favorite movie is the Aristocats - she thinks cats are the best, dogs are mildly intriguing but slightly annoying and she hates being jumped on/licked. She’s like a miniature version of me - she’ll happily pet/scritch a well-behaved dog, but she clearly gets annoyed/offended when she gets molested by a poorly trained dog. And I love her for it. :love-struck:
We have two incredibly loving, well-behaved cats at home - neither is declawed (claws are clipped regularly), and neither scratch up the furniture.
ps - one of my biggest pet peeves these days are the “A Dog’s Day” vs “A Cat’s Day” memes floating around on the interwebz… they piss me off SO much, they’re complete bullcrap. Everybody’s all “haha, so true!” and i’m like “NO IT’S NOT, IT’S BULLSH*T!!” http://www.animalfair.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/545732_285722524836583_177387432336760_663409_452482755_n-560x401.jpg
Cats rule and dogs drool. :winkgrin:
My vet has scented wipes that she and the assistant run over their hands before they handle my bad tempered girl. She (the cat) has a lot of opinions, but the vet always handles her with respect and kindness. My other 2 cats are easy peasy personalities.
I love cats, their sense of independence is my favorite thing. I’m not into clingy, subservient pets or people. :winkgrin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9Xkv87y4xM
Just saw this video of a woman saving a kitten. She mentioned something about teaching a feral kitten workshop. Gave me the idea for some community outreach?
I’ve already compiled a list of low cost spay and neuter clinics and mailed a letter to my neighborhood in a ten mile radius with the list on it - trying to at least make it easier for people.
This workshop thing might be a good idea? Thoughts or input anyone? I would have to think through how/why/where, etc., but it might be a place to start.
[QUOTE=Pippigirl;8875745]
Meh, not necessarily true about clawing the furniture btw. Cats will sharpen their claws on anything unless you do something to correct it. Provide places for them to use. Redirect them away from the furniture. I have three cats all from a shelter. They all have their claws and they don’t claw the furniture. I had cat trees made for mine that they love scratching (has sisal rope on the posts).[/QUOTE]
Same here. I have 4 cats, 3 from the same shelter and one that was dumped here. They have cat trees and a tall scratching post and a couple of cardboard scratchers. They never claw furniture. One likes to occasionally hook his claws into carpet and pull, but I think he does it for the muscle workout. He’s not shredding pieces out or anything.
Maybe this is just my opinion, but all of the devout dog owners I know who say they love dogs and have no use for cats, are the type of people who are not interested in having an animal that can or might try to outsmart them. I don’t mind when my cats get over on me. The competition is a huge part of why I like having them around. I like something that can think for itself.
I think this is a lot of it. My father, who ADORES their dog, claims to “hate cats.” Always has, always will. And yet, every time he visits and my big orange boy plops on his lap, my dad will pet the cat FOR HOURS.
I think it’s ingrained in our culture (and maybe others) that cats are mean, evil, cruel, etc etc. Black cats are bad luck. Cats are the witch’s minion. Crazy cat ladies are synonymous with hoarders. How many Disney movies have cats as the bad guy’s sidekick? I think the stepmother in Cinderella had “Lucifer.” I STILL remember the two evil Siamese cats in a children’s movie singing, “We are Si-a-mese if you please…” and it gave me the creeps back then!
And don’t forget Dolores Umbridge as the creepy, evil cat lover!!
Even the saccharinely sweet “Homeward Bound” portrayed the two dogs as loveable, loyal, fun and happy-go-lucky, and the cat (Sassy - aptly named, of course) was grumpy, crotchety, full of herself and a delicate princess. :no:
It was ridiculously obvious that the filmmakers were all dog people. :rolleyes:
It’s really annoying and discouraging.
My one ray of hope in recent years was that they would make “Dewey The Library Cat” into a movie, but of course… that never happened. sigh
[QUOTE=ASBJumper;8878502]
Even the saccharinely sweet “Homeward Bound” portrayed the two dogs as loveable, loyal, fun and happy-go-lucky, and the cat (Sassy - aptly named, of course) was grumpy, crotchety, full of herself and a delicate princess. :no:
It was ridiculously obvious that the filmmakers were all dog people. :rolleyes:
It’s really annoying and discouraging.
My one ray of hope in recent years was that they would make “Dewey The Library Cat” into a movie, but of course… that never happened. sigh[/QUOTE]
I remember that!! It always seems to be that way. And cat jokes - always at the cat’s expense.
[QUOTE=SusanO;8876182]
Amen!!!
When I was boarding the same attitude about the barn cats. It was OK for your dogs to come out and chase them, eat their food, knock over their water??? So when I left I took the cats with me. I was the one that bought their food and paid their vet bills so I decided that meant that they were my cats. A few months after I left the barn burned down. I was so happy that the cats were safe at my house and no longer there. No way I was going to leave them behind![/QUOTE]
Holy crap! That would never have flown in my barns!!! I was ADAMANT that any visiting dogs must be nice to cats (actually my priority), horses, people, and other dogs. Any snark at anyone was grounds for immediate banning. My point was that the cats and the horses (and my dog) called the barn home and any guests had no reason to make their home uncomfortable. What really bugged me was my last BM job…the BOs had some really ill behaved dogs that should not have had free roaming rights of the property, and one of the often went after the barn cats. He had killed one prior to me, and one of the cats under my watch ended up with a butt full of stitches because of that damn dog.
Anyway, dear friends and I were just having this discussion last night. They have be fostering cats and kittens with a local group for quite a few years. They are an excellent foster home with serious experience, and have handled everything from bottle babies to taming ferals. They are very unhappy with the care and support they’ve been getting this year (I won’t go into details, but I was shocked about some of the stuff they told me about their last round of kittens), which is very sad, because cats need love, care, and respect, too.
[QUOTE=Perfect10;8874258]
I totally disagree with you. I am active in both cat and dog rescue. Dog overpopulation is still a huge problem, though maybe cat overpopulation is a bigger problem. It’s not just pit bulls that we have too many of, either. Terrier types, shepherd types, hound types (especially beagles), chihuahua types, are all plentiful at any shelter. Unless it’s small and fluffy, it desperately needs a rescue to step up to save it from animal control… [/QUOTE]
I didn’t say there were zero non-pits in need of a resolution, I said there the only massive/crisis situation is with that single variety. And it’s NOT just in the urban areas. My NJ shelters are all participating in southern transports now - and easily half of every single transport is pit bulls. There are unwanted, homeless dogs of all breeds out there, but the numbers are staggeringly lower than just 20 years ago and the non-pits are now a very different population than previously. Shelter dogs used to be mainly just down-on-their-luck normal dogs who would slide easily into a normal home. Now, as a result of every dog ‘deserving’ a home and the astounding success of s/n making it possible to experiment with the idea of no-kill, we’re rehoming dogs who show zero affection for or interest in humans, dogs who show severe anxiety and fearfulness, dogs who are so intensely kennel-crazed after a single day that they’re lunging head high at visitors and biting at the wires. I’ve been going to shelters for 3 months looking at dogs and I’ve seen only a handful who were anything like the dogs you used to find - friendly, affectionate, focused and appealing. The rest are cringing in the back of the kennel or sporadically lunging at the wire and then pacing around the kennel.
Everyone ‘deserves’ to live. Everyone who ever died, more or less, ‘deserved’ to live. But they died. Some from disease, some from accidents, some from age or from being killed. Death comes to everyone. Deserving to live is not an argument that somehow invalidates all other concerns. Cats are domesticated animals, not wild creatures. While they can and do survive well as feral animals, it’s an abandonment of our duty to them to embrace that as a solution. And it’s interesting that this came up during the discussion of why our society likes cats so much less than dogs - because would we ever accept a feral colony of dogs? Say the dogs were small and harmless, a feral colony of Beagles, say, who for some reason were too unhousetrainable to become pets. Would that work? Or would there be a hue and cry every time one was killed by a car or a loose pit bull? I don’t think it would fly. I certainly don’t think nice people would smilingly devote themselves to maintaining the feral beagle colony at the end of their block, and say it’s better to risk the beagle being flattened by a semi than be euthanized by animal control.
Random off spurt but this thread made me curious about the dog to cat ratio at my local humane society.
There are 6 adoptable dogs… and 72 adoptable cats
[QUOTE=ElisLove;8879314]
Random off spurt but this thread made me curious about the dog to cat ratio at my local humane society.
There are 6 adoptable dogs… and 72 adoptable cats[/QUOTE]
Ratio is similar at my local HS. And yet - every time I (just out of sheer curiosity) have a peek at the profiles of the dogs for adoption, there are always “issues” - can’t be around kids, can’t be around cats, can’t be in an apartment, needs obedience classes, needs a high-energy, active owner, needs a breed-experienced owner, and on and on and on… and the cat descriptions, by and large, are all “i’m loveable and sweet, i’m a bit shy but love to sit on your lap and purr, I love to sit by the window and look outside, I love to play, etc” bla bla bla…
It’s mind-boggling to me that what is, let’s be honest here, a super high maintenance pet in general (a dog) is vastly more popular and evokes such sympathy and googly eyes when all I can think to myself is “jeebus what a royal pain in the a$$, no THANK you!!”
Anyways, that’s just a personal gut reaction, though… to each their own, I know. I am a die hard cat person - even though I absolutely appreciate and enjoy the company of a well-behaved, well-trained dog (sooo far and few in between, though… and they always smell icky). 
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