This has happened to me countless times. I’ll make the mistake of mentioning my cats in light conversation, and without fail the alpha macho man in the room will express a desire to eat or kill them.
It gets seriously old after awhile.
The justification here is that cats kill our native wildlife. People have described to me the gruesome death they’d inflict on my two cats if they ever got hold of them, despite the fact that my cats are indoor pets that have never been free to hunt and kill native animals or birds. That’s why I see it as an excuse, not a reason.
This is an example of what I meant about it being more “socially acceptable” to hate cats than dogs. I don’t think a person would be too popular if he mentioned he wanted to eat or kill someone else’s pet dog, yet with cats, it seems more “okay” to make remarks about that.
Because when you are 8 years old and conquering the world, (Going to the swimming hole,exploring caves, exploring graveyards,camping,sledding, etc.) a dog wants to go with you and is the best friend ever.
Cats don’t.
I’m thinking it may also have something to do with the fact that you can generally train and control a dog more than you can a cat.
I wonder if its just women with cats that get this sort of stuff, because my male, cat-loving minion seemed honestly shocked.
Its happened often enough to me that I just acted like I hadn’t heard a thing and pretended that we were on the elevator alone.
For my wife and her family, its because they are very clean individuals and don’t keep indoor pets. The idea of getting pet hair on their clothes is gross, and many of them are allergic to cats. My wife can always tell if someone owns a cat because she can always smell the litterbox no matter where it was in the person’s house.
There’s this wierd persecution complex going on where people think its not ‘okay’ to talk about cats in the same context as talking about dogs. Or that people are ‘getting away with’ making dead cat jokes. Obviously sarcasm is lost on some people (of the cat-loving variety obviously) and if you find the statement so offensive have the wit to make a sarcastic remark back.
If people were outside playing frisbee with cats, pulling a sled in the snow, or helping to sniff out a murder victim people wouldnt have the same association with cats/cat people that they do now. However, right now cats are often associated with people who are single, antisocial, and obsessive. Dismissing cat-haters as 'macho alpha male types" doesnt change that fact.
Q: How many cat-lovers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: That’s not funny, buster.
So the “fact” is cats are going to be associated with antisocial weirdos until they can do the exact functions of dogs, even though there are millions of them in happy well-adjusted family homes?
Maybe cat-haters should stop forming their judgements based on old stereotypes? There are more cats per household than dogs now, and their popularity is expected to continue trending upward as they take over the internet.
It’s also possible to find these comments unfunny and also not be butt-hurt about them. Mildly irritated is not the same thing as OMG OFFENSE!!
Mildly irritated people don’t feel the need to chastise someone for making the remark in the first place.
But it’s a chicken and egg problem. The reason why cat owners are more annoyed by cat jokes is that said jokes are less likely to be a joke. They are less likely to be a joke because it is socially acceptable to say you hate cats.
Personally, I find it distasteful to hate any animal categorically. It’s always because you’ve had a bad experience with said animal, and then are extrapolating to all of them. That’s a thought process that I consider quite problematic, for reasons that should be obvious if you think about it.
The only exceptions are simple animals that really do always act the same, like, say, roaches. It particularly bothers me with domestic animals, since there is always variation in them. The generalizations are always just that, generalizations.
Not true, based on the number kept as pets. There are about 8% more cat pets than dogs (in the US).
But I was surprised by the comment from one person about this: “Dogs are better than cats because they are mentioned in the Bible, but cats never are.” But that person turned out to be an extreme fundamentalist christian.
I can easily tell when someone is unreasonably biased against cats. Usually these folks base their objections on retarded stereotypes like “cats are sneaky” or “cats are mean and arrogant”. Few people who have ever owned a cat or been around them to a significant degree say stuff like this, in my experience. The less exposure someone has had to cats, the more likely they will hate on them.
I do think it’s more socially acceptable to hate on cats because culturally, we’re biased towards macho things. Just like it’s cool to affect distaste for the color pink, “girly drinks”, and chick flicks, it’s cool to affect a dismissive attitude towards cats. And I say “affect” because I think some people don’t really have a problem with cats; they just want to act like a member of the in crowd.
Although I can see how the unquestioning loyalty that dogs exhibit makes it hard to dislike them, it doesn’t naturally follow that we should dislike cats. The two species are more similar than different, and in fact, I’d venture to say that even their differences are a matter of degree, not type. All the cats I’ve owned, for example, are very affectionate and social. They come when you call them, they play with toys (one will even play fetch), and they are expressive. They may not slobber me with kisses every second, but they do their own version of this frequently enough that sometimes I don’t like working from home because I hate pushing them off of me. They are 60% more independent than your average dog, but they are hardly aloof or standoffish or whatever term people like to use. They are just being cats.
Like monstro, I’ve noticed more guys becoming fans of cats. And small dogs as well. I think that’s great.