Disclaimer: I like cats and dogs both and tend to roll my eyes when people start talking about how they hate one or the other. (they're just pets, people; you don't like living with 'em, then don't have one, but taking species-specific animal behavior all personally really kind of makes you a dumbass.) That said, by temperament and experience, I admit I'm partial to cats.
When I went across the street today to the Korean sandwich shop, there was a neighborhood lady walking a morbidly obese pug or some kind of stunted bulldog, and I thought, as one will, Haha, dumb ol' fat dog.
After enjoying the fleeting entertainment of watching this dog waddle by with his skinny white lady in tow on the leash, it occurred to me that I've met a good number of pretty waddly cats in my time, too, yet I haven't had the same reaction; in fact, what I thought was something more like, right on, cat, you go on with your fat self and don't take no stuff from anybody and you can tell them to come to me if they got a problem with that.
And so then it occurred to me -- again with the occurring -- that fat dogs are sort of like guys you see at the mall who have huge beer bellies, but whose t-shirts aren't big enough to cover them so there's some belly sticking out all pink underneath (or brown, I'm not racist) and the t-shirt seems like a nice but insufficient gesture. And these guys trudge through the mall with a look of possibly happy/content simpleminded oblivion on their faces, following their wives or girlfriends wherever, relieved not to have to make the decision. You know, like dogs on a leash. And you see them and think, heh, but not in a mean-spirited way, because frankly, they're probably happier than you are and you know it, you elitist jerk.
(Digression: I once watched my aunt's dog, a fat black lab who looked like a painfully overstuffed sausage, sneakily steal a 1lb block of cheese off her coffee table and down it in one gulp. Besides thinking, wow, that dog's not gonna shit for a week, I had a kind of real sympathy for these poor creatures who are driven to vice and iniquity, and thus inevitably shame -- nobody does shame like dogs -- by the fact that all they really want to do is eat. That dog probably knew it was going to be in trouble with its humans for eating that cheese and yet, there was just no question of leaving the cheese alone. It's almost like looking with knowing pity on a teenaged younger brother who you know is a sweetheart and a good kid, but you might have to mercy-kill him because his penis is making him crazy and not fit for social exposure. You know, I just now finally understood where the "dogs are guy pets, cats are girl pets" thinking comes from: corresponding stereotypes. It's still dumb, but I understand it now.)
Fat cats, on the other hand, are more like veeeery voluptuous women who happily stuff themselves into revealing dresses and dare you to look at them with anything but humble desire. Just as said women might think something like, I am a beautiful, NATURAL woman and I know REAL men like something to hold onto when they do the love, not just some skinny shit that might as well be a boy, their cat counterparts might think, if this were nature, I'd be killing things every five seconds to be this well fed, but since this ain't nature, thank jesus, I've got a human to do that shit for me, and since we're talking about it, why aren't you on your feet right now, human, opening me another can of the good stuff?
Maybe all this projection comes down to that the hell YOU looking at? face that cats can pull off as a standard feature, but I think I'll finally make this a real blog by bringing it squarely into oversharing territory and observe here that this may be why I like cats a little better, because they can do contempt and dogs can't, and that's important. I mean, who wants to be with somebody who can't bring themselves to hate you a little bit? I know *I* don't.
When I went across the street today to the Korean sandwich shop, there was a neighborhood lady walking a morbidly obese pug or some kind of stunted bulldog, and I thought, as one will, Haha, dumb ol' fat dog.
After enjoying the fleeting entertainment of watching this dog waddle by with his skinny white lady in tow on the leash, it occurred to me that I've met a good number of pretty waddly cats in my time, too, yet I haven't had the same reaction; in fact, what I thought was something more like, right on, cat, you go on with your fat self and don't take no stuff from anybody and you can tell them to come to me if they got a problem with that.
And so then it occurred to me -- again with the occurring -- that fat dogs are sort of like guys you see at the mall who have huge beer bellies, but whose t-shirts aren't big enough to cover them so there's some belly sticking out all pink underneath (or brown, I'm not racist) and the t-shirt seems like a nice but insufficient gesture. And these guys trudge through the mall with a look of possibly happy/content simpleminded oblivion on their faces, following their wives or girlfriends wherever, relieved not to have to make the decision. You know, like dogs on a leash. And you see them and think, heh, but not in a mean-spirited way, because frankly, they're probably happier than you are and you know it, you elitist jerk.
(Digression: I once watched my aunt's dog, a fat black lab who looked like a painfully overstuffed sausage, sneakily steal a 1lb block of cheese off her coffee table and down it in one gulp. Besides thinking, wow, that dog's not gonna shit for a week, I had a kind of real sympathy for these poor creatures who are driven to vice and iniquity, and thus inevitably shame -- nobody does shame like dogs -- by the fact that all they really want to do is eat. That dog probably knew it was going to be in trouble with its humans for eating that cheese and yet, there was just no question of leaving the cheese alone. It's almost like looking with knowing pity on a teenaged younger brother who you know is a sweetheart and a good kid, but you might have to mercy-kill him because his penis is making him crazy and not fit for social exposure. You know, I just now finally understood where the "dogs are guy pets, cats are girl pets" thinking comes from: corresponding stereotypes. It's still dumb, but I understand it now.)
Fat cats, on the other hand, are more like veeeery voluptuous women who happily stuff themselves into revealing dresses and dare you to look at them with anything but humble desire. Just as said women might think something like, I am a beautiful, NATURAL woman and I know REAL men like something to hold onto when they do the love, not just some skinny shit that might as well be a boy, their cat counterparts might think, if this were nature, I'd be killing things every five seconds to be this well fed, but since this ain't nature, thank jesus, I've got a human to do that shit for me, and since we're talking about it, why aren't you on your feet right now, human, opening me another can of the good stuff?
Maybe all this projection comes down to that the hell YOU looking at? face that cats can pull off as a standard feature, but I think I'll finally make this a real blog by bringing it squarely into oversharing territory and observe here that this may be why I like cats a little better, because they can do contempt and dogs can't, and that's important. I mean, who wants to be with somebody who can't bring themselves to hate you a little bit? I know *I* don't.
Posts
