By INGRID McCLEARY
It's a dog's world. Phooey! A dog is man's best friend. Double phooey! As the cat in Disney's Homeward Bound, the Incredible Journey said, "Cats rule and dogs drool." And as an owner of both cats and dogs, I can personally vouch for the validity of that statement.
Cats are cleaner--in fact, they're self-cleaning. No struggling with a weekly bath session, no weekly floor-mopping after the bath struggle is finished, no towels to wash after you've dried him off and--best of all--no wiping down the walls after the ungrateful mutt does his head-to-toe shake, rattle, rock & roll dance from the bathroom, down the hall and out the back door for a quick turn in the fresh dirt. Nope, all you have to do with cats is sit and watch how cute they look licking themselves.
Cats don't smell. Neglect to bathe your dog for a month, and you'll know what I mean.
Cats are more intelligent than dogs: They know the difference between an intruder and a breeze blowing through the leaves. They meow when there's something to meow about; otherwise, they nap.
Yes, you can teach a dog tricks. But I had a cat that fetched. And another who'd grab a can of cat food, carry it in her mouth and drop it by my feet if I missed her six o'clock feeding.
I admit it's harder to train a cat to walk with a leash, but then, you don't need to walk cats. They do just fine on their own, thank you very much.
Though my dog can climb our back fence by scrambling up the 2-by-4 crossbeams, my cat can jump six times her height to the top of the fence with barely a twitch of her hind legs.
I've never had to scold my cat for rummaging through the garbage: She prefers to sit calmly on my counter till I notice her, and more often than not, I'll pull out a choice nibble or two from the refrigerator for her. My dog, on the other hand, treats the garbage can as his second food bowl. All he has to do is disperse the paper and coffee grinds, shred the junk mail and surely he'd find something delicious on the bottom.
Let's face it, the only reason people like dogs better than cats is because dogs drool after their masters. The sun rises and falls on the master's smile. What power! Tell the dog to sit, it sits. Tell it to lie down, it lies down. Tell it to shake, it lifts its paw to shake. If you've trained a dog correctly, you can get a surge of power with each and every command you give. They love ya, man! Unconditionally.
I have felt this unconditional love from my dog. There is happiness in seeing him wag his tail whenever I walk into the room. It's so easy to make dogs happy--a pat here, a scratch there, a ball tossed this way, a walk around the block. They're loving, simple creatures.
But I like cats better, maybe for the very reason that I'm not the center of the universe to them. They remain with me because they choose to remain with me. They come to me because they want to come to me. It is a relationship built on mutual respect, which is more rewarding to me than blind adoration.
Yep, cats rule and dogs drool. And in my household, they can rule and drool all they want because sharing my life with these animals is an incredible journey.
Sunnyvale resident Ingrid McCleary is a columnist for The Sun.
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, December 4, 1996.
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