Cats vs. Dogs

By Adam Quesnell
Contributing Writer

Disclaimer: There may be weeks throughout the publication of my column where I do not include a silly disclaimer. Just because I have had a disclaimer on every column thus far doesn’t mean it’s something I will do every time. I want this column to be a place of fluctuation and discovery. I can’t be pinned down, man. This stuff is like word jazz. Now, I know you are probably asking yourself, “Word Jazz? You mean, Poetry?” No, I don’t mean poetry. I mean word jazz, which, as any self-respecting humanologist knows, is when words form jazz bands.

I wrote a joke once that went like this, “When I say ‘I’m more of a cat person,’ that’s just my polite way for me to say, ‘your dog is an %@#hole.’”

I prefer the company of cats to dogs. One tends to have a different view of dogs when the family dog you’ve loved since you were born goes guano crazy and uses its little Yorki claws to tear your face to ribbons as though it was a warg with a taste for man-flesh. Also, a black lab attacked me while I was walking home from the middle school I attended. No blood there; just running, then getting knocked down, then hitting the dog in the face with my trapper keeper, then the dog’s owner grabbing him, pulling him off of me and saying, “He almost never does that.” Oh, well, by all means, if your awful dog only occasionally attacks 6th graders from the middle-school four blocks away from your house, don’t bother having it on a leash.

Comedian Paul F. Tompkins wrote and performed one of the best dog-related bits ever. The joke basically states (in the mind bending and hilarious way that only Paul F. Tompkins can) that people who have dogs that bark in your face only to have the owner say, “he’s alright, don’t worry,” are the equivalent of people who bring a friend to the bar who turns to you and says, “I’m going to murder you!” Which of course prompts the friend to respond with, “he’s alright, don’t worry.” In my experience, people who have dogs, especially large dogs, sometimes forget that many people don’t like things that are 1/3rd the size of a bear jumping up on them, or barking at them simply because they politely knocked on the dog owner’s door.

I actually had non-murderous dogs that I loved growing up, but, after we gave our German Shepherd away to a farm (this isn’t a euphemism for killing the dog; we went out to the farm to visit him a couple of times), my family got two cats: Big Kitty and Little Kitty (because we operated under the theory that cats don’t really care what their names are … after years of owning a cat as an adult, I am still on the fence about this). Little Kitty was a calico barn-cat and Big Kitty was a pet shop purchased tabby. Little Kitty would sit in your lap and knead for hours. Big Kitty was a hyper-intelligent troublemaker who could open the fridge or freezer (which eventually included the ability to chew the packaging tape off the fridge or move the sand-filled plastic bear that we used to keep it closed). Big Kitty once pushed an oscillating fan onto my head off of a shelf above my bed to get my attention. I know I complained about violent dogs, but something about that type of calculated assault earned my respect. He was like a cartoon cat in a comic strip that you would occasionally find sleeping in the freezer with the door open. Big Kitty lived for about nine years when he got cancer of the jaw and I had to put him down the day after Christmas when I was on holiday from college. Little Kitty lived to knead on laps until she was 21.

Now, I have for the most part beaten my crippling fear of dogs and there are several dogs of varying sizes in my life that I have a fondness for, but the presence of Big Kitty and Little Kitty in my memory pretty much sealed my fate of being a “cat person” first and foremost in terms of pet ownership. I think it goes beyond the mauling and the good cats, though. I can enter somewhere without having a large animal face in my crotch and still feel at peace with the world. When I originally typed that last sentence it read, “I can enter somewhere without having a large animal crotch in my face,” I thought you would enjoy that peak at my process.

I guess the whole point of this column is, “Hey dog owners, owning a cat is the same level of pet ownership as owning a dog, so don’t suggest I put my diabetic cat to sleep because the insulin is expensive.”

I feel like I left something out before that last sentence. I should have told you that my current cat, Clover, is a diabetic. I give her two shots daily and I have done so for several years. She is also incredibly sweet, she loves strangers, she would never bite, she sleeps next to me all night every night, and she does an amazing impression of a potato where she rolls over on her back and … well, you’d have to see it.

At first the insulin ran about 70 bucks every 60 days. However, that brand was discontinued and I had to switch her over to a different insulin that costs 140 dollars every 60 days (that’s twice as much, for you non-math heads). This doesn’t really bother me because Clover is 100% worth the expense.

I was among friends recently, and the topic of increased prices came up. I jumped in with, “my cat’s insulin is twice as expensive as it used to be,” and a friend of a friend said, without a hint of irony, “damn, why don’t you put it to sleep? It’s just a cat.” I know this person to be a dog owner so I said, “What if it was one of your dogs?” and he responded with, “That’s different…” I am not implying that this attitude is typical of dog owners, but somehow, I feel like that exchange exemplifies everything that is wrong with the human race … well that and famine.

Adam Quesnell is a stand-up comedian and writer working out of Moorhead, MN. Send feedback to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), follow him on twitter at twitter.com/adamquesnell or visit http://www.adamquesnell.com