this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
57 points (88.0% liked)
Asklemmy
43927 readers
672 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I am not a cat person, but I've lived with a couple of them and they can be really charming little companions. They can also be incredible assholes and imo their charisma doesn't make up for it. Some people just weigh the pros and cons differently.
I think it's more of a gamble with cats. Dogs are just gonna love you. Some cats are completely sweet and cuddly, and others attack your ankles everytime you try to get water.
Depends on the dog too. Maybe you’ve only experience good dogs but there are MANY dogs out there with dangerous behavioral issues. “Dogs are just gonna love you” just isn’t true. It depends on the breed, the dog, and their history.
As a cat person who has had several cats and never lived with a dog long term, I am surprised to learn this (though it seems so obvious). My response was based off of what so many dog people have told me! If it's a gamble either way, why would you pick the animal who has better ability to actually kill you?
Part of this is people continue to believe cats can't be trained. It's harder, but possible. It also means you have to work harder to train out bad behaviour (and they will only mostly stop while you're around). So getting your cat to not bite you can be done, as well as training them to not go on the counter when you can see it.
Cats are also domesticated differently than most animals, and will absolutely, literally shit on things they know you care about if you piss them off.
It makes sense that bad cat owners are responsible, in large part, for bad cat behavior. That said, if it's so difficult to raise a cat properly, then maybe cats just aren't good pets for most people.
As I said, cats are domesticated differently. Current speculation is they self-domesticated during the beginning of agriculture. What this means for us is that, unlike dogs, it's more of an agreement between us and them, and they will make it known if they don't agree with the situation. This is the nugget of truth behind "Dogs have owners, cats have staff." So, as with dogs, if your lifestyle isn't acceptable to them, you shouldn't own them. The difference is what is acceptable.