Who Wears the Fur in this House?

Cats pretend to be high-maintenance overlords; dogs pretend to be slavishly devoted minions. Some people fall for this, but do not be deceived! The true state of affairs is revealed by one simple word: poo.

dog poo fairy

A cat, given the requisite freedom, will do (and bury) its poo somewhere you will never see it. A dog, on the other hand, will poo right in the middle of the lawn (and probably not even your lawn) and thus require you to pick it up. This is not the action of a devoted minion.

Aldous Huxley said that “to his dog, every man is Napoleon,” but can you really imagine Napoleon on pooper-scooper duty? Didn’t think so. On the other hand, there is an entire luxury industry based around the poo of a certain kind of cat. I am not making this up.

A dog is like a permanent toddler: they’re bumptious, they freak out if you’re not on hand, and they will always need you to feed, bathe, and clean up after them.

Australian Cattle Dog puppy mascot

Cats, on the other hand, are more like teenagers: a broad degree of independence with occasional outbreaks of frolicksome childhood (when they think you’re not looking) and, of course, they’re always ready to veg on the couch. They are also always ready to devour anything left out on the bench, but at least they don’t have opposable thumbs. The fridge and microwave are safe.

I am, it is true, a cat person. I have had cats for most of the last twenty years. On the other hand, I have also owned a dog, and I think I can say that I was not a great success as a dog owner. Dogs, like children, are high-maintenance and high-energy, which does not fit well with a low-energy person.

If you are considering parenthood, I recommend you try a dog first. The feeding, the excursions, the cleaning up messes you didn’t make, the constant behaviour-correction, the inability to go away for the weekend, the broken nights (children and dogs don’t have inhibitions about volume nor sharing their feelings with the world) – it’s all there. If you can’t hack the canine version, consider carefully before embarking on the human version.

Our dog getting treated like a baby, again.

Cats, on the other hand, only require feeding. They clean up after themselves; they don’t need to be taken for walks in the pouring rain; they don’t mind if you get someone else to feed them for a couple of days (but they’re happy to see you when you get back) and once they’ve learned what behaviour you don’t like, they’re careful not to do it when you’re looking. Cats only emit high-decibel noises in an emergency, and they prefer to spend their nights (and indeed, their days) curled up snoozing on your bed.

And despite the bad press, cats do care. I had a cat once that would climb into the lap of a crying person, rub up against them, emit concerned mews and generally be as consoling as possible. Admittedly, she couldn’t tell the difference between laughing and crying, but it’s the thought that counts.

I think I can safely say Absinthe's a lap cat now.

Cats have also been known to warn their owners of house-fires, attack intruders, or snuggle up to elderly people in rest-homes who are nearing their end. Mind you, dogs are also known to do these sorts of things – especially if they’ve been trained to.

Don’t get me wrong: I like dogs. But until they learn to clean up after themselves, it’s the human who’s the devoted attendant, not the dog.

Advice: the Good, the Bad & the Ugly

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that people find they must give other people advice. However little qualified they may be to do so, they can’t help themselves. It’s only human.

It is also only human to resent the giving of advice, and consequently to ignore it. Unfortunately, the better the advice, the more likely it is to provoke resentment. As Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote, “Please give me some good advice in your next letter. I promise not to follow it.”

A widow of a civil servant seeks advice about her delayed pension from a volunteer at the Citizens' Advice Bureau in Croydon, 1940. D522

Of course, some advice is complete rubbish, and shouldn’t be followed at all. Exhibit A, the advice received from someone who Shall Remain Nameless who told me I should have a boyfriend “just for practice” and then dump him. (I did, some time later, get a boyfriend. I have not dumped him.)

Then there is the sort of advice that is a pleasure to follow, like Edith Sitwell’s dictum about staying in bed.

And then there is the plain, straight-forward advice which can be of great use if one is prepared to accept it, such as Edwina Currie’s: “The strongest possible piece of advice I would give to any young woman is: Don’t screw around and don’t smoke.”

Nourse Woman with cigarette

I asked for advice at my hen party, and what I got was a mixed bag. “I think you should go through with it,” was pretty good (and I took it). “Don’t have children before you get married,” was very sensible, but two days before the wedding, a bit redundant. “Too many mothers is a bad thing,” was cryptic, but no doubt very wise.

I think the best advice I have ever received was from my mother (mothers being traditional dispensers of wisdom). She said, “there is nothing this world has to offer which can begin to compensate for missing out on what God has planned for your life.”

Good advice is worth living by; and worth passing on. What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Quote: Standardization

Cranberry-Mohn Muffins in baking tray

“Because of the very nature of the world as it is today our children receive in school a heavy load of scientific and analytic subjects, so it is in their reading for fun, for pleasure, that they must be guided into creativity.
“These are forces working in the world as never before in the history of mankind for standardization, for the regimentation of us all, or what I like to call making muffins of us, muffins all like every other muffin in the muffin tin.”

Madeleine L’Engle
accepting the Newbery Medal for A Wrinkle in Time