opposable thumbs

A letter to the Guardian made me grin this morning. In response to an article arguing The case against pets: is it time to give up our cats and dogs? earlier this month. I admit I am terribly biased on the subject, but I do find such arguments puerile, condescending and mildly offensive on a purely visceral level.

That said, I sometimes wonder if dog ownership has become too much of a "thing" in recent years; gone are the days when me and mine could naturally expect to have the park to ourselves on any given evening's walk. Although a side benefit of everybody having a dog now is that they're now quite welcome in most places you go, pubs and many shops in particular. Market forces at work. And were there fewer cats in our street, those evening walks would be easier.

Actually, that's a little obsolete; Jack found cats an offense to the natural order of things, and on spotting one he would turn totally feral, hackles raised, snarling, barking and lunging on the lead like a mad loon. And he wondered why people would cross the street to avoid him? Whilst the cat invariably just sat there ahead of us on the pavement, smirking at the idiot dog and intentionally blocking the path so we'd have to walk into the road to get around it.

Lottie, on the other hand, merely thinks they're cute and vaguely interesting. Which I suspect massively offends and irritates all the cats in our street to no end. 

For the record, I love cats almost as much as I love dogs. And whilst I have been bitten my any number of dogs, almost all by accident, a dog has never put me in hospital. Whereas a cat has.

Anyway, I shall quote the letter on the Guardian's website this morning, as I find myself very much with Mr Nigel Walker from Hutton Roof, Cumbria.

 Your article asks if it’s time to give up our pets. When I did a survey of our dogs and cats, the answer was a hard stare from beside their food bowls. Clearly a no from them. Anthropomorphising animals is always a bad idea. A dog with an outfit on doesn’t care about the outfit unless it’s uncomfortable; all it wants is to be with its pack. Cats are social animals too, and see us as large nurturing sort-of cats with opposable thumbs. Though it might be true that if cats developed their own opposable thumbs, humans would all be dead in seconds.

Nigel Walker
Hutton Roof, Cumbria

(Top photo is Dad's late Bruno, the others all feature Jack)