Here is a way you can tell you're a dog person. Several times a day you say "Sit. Sit. Sit. Sit. Sit. Sit. Sit. Sit. Sit. Sit. Sit. Sit. Sit. Sit! Sit. Sit. Sit. Sit. Sit. Sit. Sit. Sit. Sit. Sit. Sit. Good BOY!"
Here is a way you can tell you're a dog. You are lost in adoration of your favorite person who is barking at you in a friendly way and after a good long while you pop your butt down on the floor for one second and back up again and your person is so very very happy! You did it! You made your person happy! Nothing makes you happier than making your person that happy and it only took one butt-pop! OH MY GOODNESS THERE'S A TREAT! It's a wonderful world!
You're never not comfortable. Your head may be upside-down or cranked sideways and you've got one foot draped over an edge and the other sticking straight up and the third over your eyes and the fourth missing altogether, but you're comfortable. Periodically a portion of your pudding will quiver and twitch in pursuit of a dream mouse, but then it will settle back down into a state of even deeper satisfaction. You can be decanted into any shape space and fill it like a bag of beans. You are strenuously content, and any departure from that condition will be regarded as a tragic misalignment of the proper world order. You are boneless. At any moment you can rig up a functional skeleton for the purpose of self-maintenance or hygiene but as soon as your immediate requirements are fulfilled, you will soundlessly revert to custard. You will settle back down into the perpetual eye of all the world's storms. In a plush onesie.
And you will be comfortable.
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The cartoonist Larson was very good on the subject of dogs. Do you remember the one, 'What you say to your dog - What your dog hears'?
ReplyDeleteblah blah blah blah blah blah blah GINGER! blah blah blah blah blah blah
DeleteI liked the one with pigeons on a tree, seeing people underneath with targets on their head. Caption: How pigeons view the world.
DeleteBasically, I liked all of them. He immediately got a hundred imitators but nobody came close.
DeleteSome of them, like Non Sequiter make me laugh. But Larson had me laughing until tears came out of my eyes. I was so sad when he decided not to make his cartoons anymore.
DeleteI have his book, Wildlife Preserves, with the cover showing a bunch of wild animals crammed into a jelly jar.
DeleteAww! Missed that one!
Delete'Lost Puppy' is my all-time favourite.
DeleteI've been getting educated in dog psychology since I started training my 5 month old Sheltie. Don't say, "Sit sit sit sit sit!" Don't say, "Come come come come come here boy here boy come come come!" All that noise just makes you sound like a squeaky toy and creates the sense that it's playtime. Instead, give the command one. time. only. Then wait until the dog does it, and reward him. Much time waiting. This is slow learning. Trying to get into the zen of it. Having some success. But, by god, he's cute -- when he's not eating something disgusting. Dogs!
ReplyDeleteI like cats too but our last cat was pretty gross. He pulled a bunch of quilting fabric out of the cupboard and used it like a litter box on the sewing room floor.
Our father wanted to trap the raccoon that was tearing up his vegetable garden. He got a live trap and baited it with cat food. Next morning, there's my mother's big old fat cat Louie, calmly yawning in the trap. We kids thought that was hysterical.
I know cats like to get in the middle of a quilt but that's stepping over the line.
DeleteI just knew you quilted, Susan. All the best people do.
DeleteI am a cat person(although I do like dogs) and my black cat is a very cuddly girl.
ReplyDeleteI like dogs like I like kids. If someone else keeps them.
DeleteI used hand signals with my dog interspersed with vocal commands to get her attention. But mostly I just needed to hold my hand out level and she’d sit.
ReplyDeleteOur one and only dog was exceptionally well trained and reliable but the method used would land me in jail today.
ReplyDeleteI have often said that in my next life I would like to come back as a cat. Preferably (which has challenges) one of my own cats so that my needs are appropriately met.
ReplyDeleteI'm sticking with marmot...the view's better.
DeleteI'm curious what prompted this, but this was worth a double-read; sure loved the part about piling up credits somewhere for all the cat accommodating! It's been 30 years since I had a cat, but the older I become the more I'm lonely for one. Go figure.
ReplyDeleteYou might need to indulge that. Git yourself some more credits.
DeleteI am firmly in the "both" camp. Why restrict yourself?
ReplyDeleteNo reason at all! You are also in the Goat camp!
DeleteDog versus cat is like goat versus cow, and my answer will always be THAT'S why I farm! I love them all.
DeleteAnd they love you back. Not true in your larger operations...but true with you.
DeleteAlmost every single word is true here. The exception being I don't recall ever having to say "sit" more than twice before my dog sat. Perhaps my dog was the exception? The cat part is 100% spot on.
ReplyDeleteWe had a "one command" until she went deaf.
DeleteI'm with Elephant's Child - I'd like to come back as one of my own cats. That would be the life. You've described the bonelessness of a cat so well!
ReplyDeleteI might like to come back as Julie Zickefoose's dog.
DeleteI really miss Bobo, my invisible dog from childhood—the best dog ever! No fuss, no hair, no feeding, no taking for walks, no crap to clean up—he was always there by my side.
ReplyDeleteHe's still there, Jimmy. He's still there.
DeleteI read The Far Side on line every day. Mondays thru Fridays they show five of his cartoons from past years, and on Saturdays and Sundays they show two. I look forward to this every morning. My wife fits your description -- when the cat is on her lap and she has to pee, she can't get up as it will disturb the cat. And one of our dogs will do anything for a treat. (The other would rather play with us.)
ReplyDeleteDiaper the cat people!
DeleteOur cat is most comfortable two feet away with her butt facing us.
ReplyDeleteThere are those. My first cat (Saint) Larry was a tail-down kind of gal and I never fully appreciated it until we got tail-cranked-up Tater.
DeleteI approve of that name.
DeleteI have the best of both worlds- chihuahuas. They are basically cats that bark, and they are always very comfortable on my lap- all 3 of them!
ReplyDeleteNo. NO. No. Cats that bark are significantly worse than cats otherwise. And chihuahuas are all pointy in the lap. No. THREE?
Delete