Anyone who has read to children in the past 15 years or so is likely to know the book Dog In, Cat Out by Gillian Rubinstein, and it was always of interest to me that the simple need to have only one or the other indoors at a time could be the basis of such a popular children's book. My family is a cat in, dog out family, in that the dog is not permitted inside except at times of thunderstorms or fireworks. We see the cat as clean and the dog as not clean, or at least not clean enough for inside. In our assessment of dogs and cats, score one to the cat.
The New Scientist magazine has just published a scoring comparison of dogs and cats as pets over 11 categories, and it is a close thing. In my column in The Herald today I give an account of the comparison in the 11 categories, which are headed: Brains, Shared history, Bonding, Popularity, Understanding, Problem solving, Vocalisation, Tractability, Eco-friendliness, and Utility. There are a few surprises in there, among them that cats have more brains, or information-processing capacity, than dogs, that cats have a better sense of smell (and sight and hearing) than your average dog, that cats are friendlier to the environment than dogs.
Friendlier to the environment? Yes. "Cats love wildlife - in the UK alone they kill more than 188 million wild animals each year," the magazine says. "But dogs are no bunny huggers. They have been implicated in the decline of the rare European nightjar, they disturb ground-nesting birds and, even when walked on a lead, their mere presence may reduce biodiversity."
But dogs will the comparison 6-5, and I say that if we add a 12th category, Survivability, we'll have a tie.
What's your assessment? Is a dog or a cat the better pet?
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