Mrs P and I went out on some errands and then lunch. Got back home after a couple of hours.
Piper Dog: “You’re back! I was so worried!! I’m so glad to see you again!!! Don’t ever do that again!!!”
Piper Cat: “Huh? Do I know you? Did you go somewhere?”
My Parson Russell Terrier has gotten so used to us coming and going that he sometimes barely raises his head from his bed when we walk in the door, but if we leave him home for four hours, he will greet us at the door with his tail wagging wondering what took so long. I never owned a cat who paid attention to my coming or going. They just don’t care, as long as they’re not hungry.
Pluto the spaniel will see me around the house and nonchalantly note my presence without getting up from his resting place.
But if Mrs. J. walks him a few minutes later and he sees me coming toward him in the yard, he strains at the leash in mad joy to greet me. “Dad! It’s you! Oh frabjous Day!!!”
Cats in my experience do not do this.
This is exactly right. Dogs are true and loyal friends. Some dogs – like the Bernese Mountain Dog that is my icon – tend to form lifetime bonds with their owners. My Berner would not allow anyone but me or my son to walk him.
Cats are just mercenary opportunists who are just in it for the cat food.
I propose a few updates:
Human packs for a trip and cat tries to get into suitcase. Dog does not notice suitcase.
Human returns and dog dances with joy. Cat pisses on pillow to indicate displeasure that human dared to leave.
Yet certain cats will eagerly run up when someone they know shows up and twine about their ankles while making happy noises. Shows the fallacy of expecting uniform reactions from animals or anthropomorphizing them.
This. While I enjoy the cats vs dogs thing it is important to remember that they are all individuals unto themselves.
Gormless George gets very vocal when one of his slaves leaves the house. He knows the sound of our car lock chirp and has been known to wake up from a dead sleep in the back room to run to the front door to be there when it opens.
The other cat looks annoyed that her nap has been disturbed.
I had a cat who would always greet me at the door when I came home. I lived alone, so with just the two of us I suppose my arriving was some sort of event in her life.
Once I went on vacation for ten days and the friend I had visiting to feed her said the cat always hid. When I came home from my trip the cat poked her head around the corner, saw it was me and launched herself at me in greeting. I’m definitely anthropomorphizing, but I swear she had a look on her face that said, “Oh, my god, it’s you! I thought you were never coming back!!”
Many years ago –
I took a trip wandering around the country that wound up taking roughly a year. I left my cat in the care of friends, who moved into the place I’d been living in; the cat’s living quarters stayed the same, but her caretakers changed.
This was long before cell phones or household internet. Every once in a while I’d find a phone and call in, or send a postcard or letter. Eventually, I called the friends who were taking care of the cat and told them I’d be home on one of three days, but I didn’t know which.
I didn’t come home on the first day, on which the humans would have been first expecting me. I didn’t come home on the third day, on which they’d have been pretty sure I’d show up if I hadn’t come sooner. I came home on the day in the middle, when the humans’ level of expectation based on the phone call would have been at most the same as the day before.
When I pulled into the driveway, the cat was on the porch, wailing at me. While I got out of the car, she yowled at me. As I approached the house, she yowled at me. When I got onto the porch and was clearly safely home, coming in, and reaching for her – she quit yowling, turned her back on me, and headed straight to the cat pan. “I am so pissed off at you!”
I went after her and scooped her up. She didn’t actually need to piss.
And – remember that long intro about how the humans weren’t expecting me any more that day than the one before? They told me, ‘We knew you were coming home today; because that cat’s been meowing about it ever since we got up this morning.’
When she started calling for me, I was getting out of bed, or possibly getting into the car, some two hundred miles away in the next state over. She sure as hell didn’t figure it out from hearing the car.
– I miss that cat.
It is true that I’ve never known a cat who appeared to get upset about the humans going away for part of a day in an ordinary fashion; but have known at least one dog who did and have heard of others.
And then there’s my mom’s dog. Whenever anyone comes over, especially someone he really likes, like me, he’ll bark and run around and paw at the door and jump and raise every sort of ruckus, that takes at least ten minutes to calm down… if there’s someone else in the house. But if it’s just him in the house and anyone comes over, he barely reacts.
Incidentally, “someone else in the house” includes other dogs, in the event that someone with a dog is visiting and both dogs are left alone in the house briefly.
My previous and current cat both greet(ed) me at the door when I came home. They could hear the garage door open and came down to meet me at the door. They were open feeders, so it wasn’t that. They just like(d) to see me.
Dog affection feels artificial. You don’t have to earn a dog’s affection; it’s just there, regardless. This whole idea that dogs are more attuned to human emotional states is bunk; every dog I’ve ever met has loved me and slathered me with attention despite me not wanting to have anything to do with them. Doesn’t matter. But a cat will only show affection when they’ve figured out that you aren’t a threat. Things are more valuable when they’re earned, affection included.
The fact that dogs are hygienically disgusting whereas cats are fastidiously clean is just icing.
My Berner enjoyed being groomed and was always perfectly clean. He didn’t exactly enjoy baths, but he tolerated them. Have you ever tried to give a cat a bath?
Here’s some more “icing” (emphasis mine):
Dog bites may look worse, because their teeth are larger, but the slender, sharp fangs of a cat penetrate deeply into the tissues. Cat bites are more likely to introduce bacteria deep into the wound, causing serious infection and damage to tendons and ligaments. In a recent Mayo Clinic study, one third of patients bitten on the hand by a cat were hospitalized and two thirds of those patients needed surgery to treat the bite injury.
Never had to give a cat a bath. Shorthair cats easily groom themselves. And they don’t roll around in their own shit or chase skunks, either.
There are slightly more cats than dogs in the US:
https://animals.howstuffworks.com/pets/just-how-many-house-cats-are-there-the-world.htm
Despite this, 90% of animal bites presenting to the ER in the US are from dogs:
I’m also not aware of any housecats that have ever eaten a woman’s face:
And to be fair, cat bites are no joke. Infection in particular is a serious issue. But in terms of the numbers, dog bites are a way bigger problem.
My guess is that this is the percentage of such bites that went to a doctor (how would they even know about the others?); and that this was a very small percentage of bites from a cat. Most cat bites are from cats who aren’t seriously trying to injure the person, but who are either trying to play or expressing annoyance. I’ve been nipped by cats a whole lot of times, including about three days ago, and have never reported any of them to a doctor; though I probably should have gone to a doctor with the only one of those bites that was inflicted (years ago) by a cat who really meant it. The wound healed OK on its own; but that one might not have.
This a third-hand account, but… this guy went on sabbatical for a couple of months, and left someone else to take care of the cat. The cat went into a deep depression, and, after he got back, showed its displeasure in various ways like studiously ignoring him; it took weeks for the cat to get over it.
Cats who “really mean it” (not play) can inflict deep bites that get infected; your hand will swell up like a balloon and be extremely painful.
I put it down to pack- and pride-mentality
Dogs/wolves travel together, and if one of their packmates goes missing for a long while, they’re probably gone for good. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that some dogs experience actual grief while their owners are at work or whatever, though I haven’t seen any evidence for it.
Cats, though, aren’t as tightly bonded. One might leave for a while, and when they get back, the other cats are like Ah, you made it back. That’s cool I guess.
One of my cats fits the stereotype perfectly. She’ll maybe crack one eye open as a greeting on our return. But the other one… when we take the dogs out, she’s waiting by the door when we get back, wondering where we went, who we were with, what we did, and can she go next time. She’ll go back and forth between the sliding door and the living room windows to see what we’re out there doing.
Most dog bites, too. The biggest difference between cat and dog bites is just that dogs are larger, with larger and stronger jaws.
And while I’ve never heard of any cat eating someone’s face, my sister got some pretty serious facial injuries from a cat’s claws, as a child.
Yup, I know. I was once bitten by one who really meant it, and that’s how I know. One fast chomp, and I swear his upper and lower teeth met in the middle of my hand.
The hand didn’t “swell up like a balloon”, but it did swell up some, hurt like hell, and I couldn’t use it for several days. I was later told that if he’d been a little over and had directly hit the tendon, I might never have used it normally again.
– I don’t entirely blame the cat; he was a neighboring wandering tomcat who had allowed me to scratch his ears, and I recklessly tried to pick him up without carefully checking for signals. It’s possible that I touched a wound I hadn’t seen. All he really needed to do to have gotten me to let go of him almost as fast as I did was to hiss or growl; but he probably didn’t know that, and might have had contrary experience with some other human.
I don’t think that’s a matter of not being bonded; I think it’s a matter of their normally being lone hunters. Humans don’t get upset every time a family member goes off to work or travel, as long as this is normal behavior; that doesn’t mean humans aren’t bonded.