Here is a picture of it from the kids’ activity pack at McDonald’s.
Q: Why do you need a license for a dog but not for a cat?
A: Cat’s can’t drive
Uh…dog’s can’t drive. My wife suggested the entire joke was that the word license was not what we expected it to mean.
I was expecting a dog/cat related pun.
Thoughts?
Pretty simple. Dogs can’t drive, but the joke suggests they can. Thus the humor.
Right. There’s a whole class of jokes and riddles where the set-up has a word seemingly meaning one thing, but in the punch line it’s used with a different meaning.
This is one of those jokes.
If you’re thinking “But… dogs can’t drive either!” it’s a matter of opinion whether this is a flaw in the joke, or whether it just makes it funnier.
Do you need licenses for pets in the US? In the UK, you used to require a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_licence, so the actual question makes some kind of sense - dog licenses are a thing, cat licenses aren’t. That makes it less of a leap to the whole “cat’s can’t drive” thing.
Cat licenses exist, but they are really just dog licenses with the word “dog” crossed out and “cat” written in in crayon.
The joke probably started out as “Why don’t you need a license for a cat?” and then the people who wrote it up for McDonalds messed it up by adding the dog.
Many cities/villages/counties require dog licenses. Dog owners almost universally ignore this requirement. About the only time it gets enforced is if your dog gets lost and is picked up by animal control. If that happens, the owner has to pay a fine in addition to the impound fee to get the dog returned.
Licenses for other types of pets (other than exotic animals) are more rare.
Might depend on where you are; but around here nearly all dogs get licensed. And this is a pretty rural area.
The town sends somebody around every couple of years to take a dog census. People could lie, sure; but the census-taker shows up in person, and the dog(s) they’re trying to lie about is/are probably barking while they’re being asked the question.
Back in 1987, the dog licence was abolished in the UK on the grounds that less than half the canine population had one and they cost more to administer than the revenue they generated.
In 2016 it became a requirement that all dogs in England and Wales have a microchip.
Here’s a cat driving. No mention on whether or not he has a license, though.
I expected that to be Toonces.
Here’s a dog being taught to drive in real life.
It’s possible that, in the future, we may see dog taxi drivers. Their taxis would use an onboard computer to correct any errors the dog makes while driving.
It’s sort of like the old one:
The license joke is close to what some call an anti-joke. The humor is in how it subverts the idea of a joke.
Other anti-jokes:
Q: What did the farmer say when he lost his tractor?
A: Where’s my tractor?
Q: What’s red and smells like blue paint?
A: Red paint.
Q: What’s got one leg and no eyes?
A: A leg.
The village in Wisconsin where I grew up had cat licences. $5 a year or something like that. Dog licenses were more expensive.
Now that version is funny. I’ll bet you’re right. Some people just can’t tell a joke.
This is it.
“Why do you need a license for a dog but not for a cat?”
Naturally one thinks of a dog license, the type required by the city and worn around the neck. Now, “everyone” knows that you gotta have this for your dog, but you don’t need one for your cat. For the purposes of this joke, the three places in the world that issue cat licenses in a similar vein are immaterial and should be ignored — go be pedantic somewhere else.
”Cats can’t drive.”
Oh, you mean cats don’t need a driver’s license! What a hilarious twist on my expectations! Ha ha ha — that’s funny! And again, the fact that dogs don’t drive has nothing to do with the price of wheat so take that too-literal spoiler attitude to the Wet Blanket Convention.
In the city where I used to live, you needed a dog license no matter where you lived. You needed a cat license only in the city proper. The unfixed dog and cat licenses were about $25. The fixed licenses were $2 for a dog, and $1 for a cat. If your animal got hauled in, you got it back for free if it was fixed and licensed (and the license gave Animal Control a record to call look you up and call you), as long as it had not bitten anyone or caused property damage. If your animal was unfixed but duly licensed, you got fined something like $20. If you had an unfixed, unlicensed animal, you had to pay $40 to get it back on the first offense (back when I lived there-- I heard it’s gone way up), and something like $100 for the second offense. If your unfixed animal had bitten someone, you could be forced to sign a paper saying you would fix it before you could get it back (assuming you could prove it was vaccinated).
So in that county, the licenses were a way of trying to get more animals fixed, without actually passing laws saying “Fix your damm animal!” IIRC, though, there is also a law about the number of dogs you could own in the city proper before you needed a kennel license, and it was higher if you had all fixed animals (I think you were limited to four unfixed, but could have six fixed). No limit on cats.
In the city where I live now, the rabies tag you get from the vet serves as a license. When you get the vaccine, some small amount of the fee goes to the county Animal control (probably higher for non-fixed, but I don’t know; never had a non-fixed pet). You pet is supposed to wear the tag AT ALL TIMES. Most people don’t put them on indoor-only cats. I’m one who doesn’t, but I know exactly where it is. If she gets boarded, I put a little collar with the tag on her. My dog wears hers at all times.
Until it’s caught by the cat detector van.
