Which makes a better pet: A dog or a cat?

Cat

2 of 150

by Shawn Dennison

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Answering this question is hard considering the simple fact that all people differ in their taste in companionship. Dog lovers always talk about how smart and loyal their dogs are and cat fanciers like to pipe about how much personality their feline life partners possess. While both arguments hold weight in this court I think it is important to try and answer this question by scoring each animal in several categories. For the purposes of this article I will score on a winner take all super delegate basis in each category.

-Which animal is easier to potty train?

-Which animal is more loyal?

-Which animal is smarter?

_Which animal is more self sufficient?

-Which animal Is more useful to humans?

Lets start with the issue of potty training. Whether your trying to litter train your cat or yard train your dog there can be difficulties with both. Cats propose a challenge in this area due to their perceived tendencies to leave packages not randomly but because of some factor such as an unclean litter box, not being fed on time or lack of attention. Most cats I have had would only go the floor for one of these reasons. I have even heard of cases where people have managed to teach their cats to use the toilet.

In my life I have had five dogs that lived primarily in the house. It never failed that every time I thought I had trained the dog to go only outside it would just start randomly pooping and peeing on the floor. There was no rhyme or reason and no consistency in the animals timing and frequency. Maybe I'm training wrong but this seems to be the case with most dog owners I know. It would stand to reason that if the animal were intelligent enough to learn commands he should be able to figure out where to drop the remains of the day.

Round one goes to the cat.

Next up we tackle the question of loyalty. Most people would automatically give this one to the dog because of old pop culture stigmas like Lassie and Old Yeller but I think some deeper discussion is warranted. While it is true that dogs almost never want to leave their masters side where as cats sometimes don't even seem to know you exist I think cats are much more loyal than people give them credit for. You can let a cat outside and sometimes he won't come home for days but odds are he will eventually come back looking for affection (and probably food too).

Dogs are often times fitted with microchips for the simple reason that they many times if let loose unrestricted will wander off and never be seen again. This may be due more to inferior intelligence than independence from their owner but I will admit that dogs are much more dependent and unconditionally loving of their owners and it is for this reason (and also so I seem objective) that I give the nod to Fido on this one.

Round two goes to the dog.

On the issue of intelligence I think you must look past the ability of dogs to learn tricks and commands because I believe that this is a product of intense training and repetition more so than intelligence. While dogs do have the natural ability to perform certain tasks such as guarding the house and chasing down animals I feel this is a product of instinct and not intelligence.

Cats often seem to have personality and moods ranging on a much wider scale than a dogs. Dogs pretty much have 3 emotions; happy, sad, and on alert whereas cats appear to experience emotions such as boredom, indifference, and loneliness. I contend that cats possess emotional intelligence while dogs are mostly instinctual creatures.

Round three goes to kitty.

Self sufficiency is something both animals have but I think it varies in dogs according to breed. Larger hunting and sport dogs would do pretty well in the wild for a period of time but eventually they would be rooted out by larger animals such as the bear or wolf. I believe this is why you generally only see stray dogs in areas populated by humans or their waste( i.e. garbage dumps). Toy breeds are pretty much screwed without a human to feed and care for them.

Cats are very independent and self abiding. They can live in the wild largely without any human intervention for many years and if necessary they can sustain their species. It is for this reason that many feline species exist in the wild but very few canine examples exist.

Round four goes to the cat.

I feel to be fair I must give the final category to to man's best friend. Dogs are useful in may ways to humans mostly because of their hearing and smell being very sensitive. They fill many roles in our society including being great companions and guardians. I love dogs and have owned many but I feel that pound for pound cats are easier to care for, possess much more personality and and are much more relatable to humans because of their superior intellect.

Winner by split decision- Cat

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