Cats and Dogs

Did you ever notice that cat people are like cats? And dog people are like dogs? And isn't it peculiar that some people even look like their pets? I'm a cat person. I am not a dog person. It's not to say that I don't like dogs, because I do, as long as they are someone else's dog, and not mine.

Dogs didn't come and beg to live with us. Their ancestors were our competition for food. We domesticated them. Dogs are bred to be obedient and respond well to training. Dogs are loyal and dependable and work for us, which are not bad things, but ah....... so predictable!

Cats aren't like that. We didn't domesticate them; if anything, they domesticated themselves, by choice, and they are certainly not predictable. My kitty is a feral cat that at some point chose to stick around. Training... outside of the litter box... forget about it.

Entertaining dog videos on Facebook tend to show off some skill they were trained to do. Cat videos, on the other hand, always seem to capture some weird or surprising behavior. One could rightly brag that their dog or their cat is smart, but cats are more autonomous and always ready to make a choice you had not anticipated. Your dog is your faithful liege as long as you feed and love it, but not a cat; when it comes down to it, a cat forever holds a wild card, and can take you or leave.

Even though we love dogs, no one wants to be a dog, at least in terms of how we relate to other people. Somewhere inside, many of us fear that social media are turning us all into dogs – loyal, dependable, and predictable. Our daily interaction increasingly becomes a conditioned response and a bad habit we cannot seem to break free from. When the dog whistle blows – in the form of a new message or post – we jump to read it and interact.

Not me. I'm a cat. I like to remain autonomous in a world that is increasingly under surveillance. I don't respond well to dog whistles. Messages can wait. I don't like to be prodded at every click by a plethora of algorithms run by the richest corporations in all of history. I don't like that they are making money by manipulating my viewing behavior and buying choices. I am a cat.