It's Raining Cats and Dogs

So this past week my mom recruited me to take her and one of our cats to the vet for his checkup. Like an idiot I of course said I would, mainly because I was so happy it wasn’t me going to the doctor for once. Then I got into the car with the cat and I suddenly remembered why I don’t like taking the cats to the vet. Somehow, the cats know where they are going, and they begin to make this loud, very irritating sound that resembles what a baby would sound like if you hung it by its nostrils. While my mom is trying to comfort Chewy (named because of his habit of gnawing on everything he sees including toes and the Chewbacca like sound he used to make when he was a kitten), I am driving as fast as I can to the vet. At least this one stays still; our other cat, Hawkins (I swear he already had that name at the shelter; I do not have some sort of unhealthy man crush on Cody Hawkins), will crawl around near the pedals and generally try as hard as he can to make me crash.

Of course, once I see what they go through at the vets I don’t blame them for preferring to crash. For one thing, they have to sit in the waiting room with a bunch of dogs. Oh sure, you may have to sit in the waiting room with some guy with the swine flu and a lady with boils or something, but you rarely have to sit next to someone who is trying to bite you (and if that has happened to you, I apologize, but the doctor said I’m cured of rabies now). When the vet finally does take Chewy in, she immediately wants to take his temperature. Unfortunately for animals, this doesn’t involve his mouth. He of course is sitting on his tail and scooting away from the vet with his butt pinned to the table like he was trying to scratch a bad itch. Eventually though the vet does grab his tail and gently says “It’s going to be okay.” I thought this was pretty stupid to be talking to the cat, but then I realized she was actually talking to me. I saw what she was doing and immediately looked away and suddenly became very interested in the heartworm poster on the wall (heartworms are another one of the really painful things that animals have to deal with that as far as I know humans don’t get, like hairballs). And don’t even get me started on the whole concept of neutering.

As if this all weren’t bad enough, the vet said that Chewy had to lose some weight and that I should feed him less. I of course mentioned to the doctor that since as far as I could tell all cats did was eat and sleep, it was a wonder all cats aren’t just round jiggly balls of fur. In fact, I like cats mainly because their lifestyle is very similar to mine. But the vet insisted that Chewy needed to lose weight (that’s the convenient thing about being a vet, the patients can’t complain about your diagnosis). So in addition to being taken to the vet, Chewy is now constantly complaining to me because I don’t feed him as often as before and has resorted to stealing Hawkins’ food (not that I blame him, I do the same thing with my family). Thankfully Chewy is not a dog, or the vet would have told me to walk him, which of course means I have to walk, which I don’t want to do. After all, the vet never said I had to lose weight.

That is just one of the reasons that I like cats way better than dogs. In fact, I have to be completely honest, but I hate dogs. Now I have made fun of people’s race, religion, and appearance, yet the statement I just wrote will probably get the most negative reaction of anything I’ve ever written. Dog people are very enthusiastic about their dogs, and whenever I admit I hate dogs they all say the same thing: “How can anybody hate dogs?” Well, if you hate large, stupid, slobbering, stink things that take dumps all over the place, then you can hate dogs (and hockey players for that matter). Oh sure, puppies are cute. But then again even I was a cute baby at one point and look how that turned out. Just like with me, they start out small and cute but then they get big and hairy and they start humping random things and defecating everywhere.

But dog people are like “But dogs are so smart.” For some reason these people think that dogs are geniuses and can do things like smell cancer and dial 911 and sense storms and take SATs for football players and write poetry or whatever. Oh sure there was Lassie, but she just seemed smart because she lived with a retarded kid who kept getting stuck in wells and lawn tractors and drowning in rivers. (By the way, did you know all the dogs that played Lassie were actually males? So why didn’t they just make the Lassie a male? Is it so unbelievable that there is such a thing as a smart male that they had to make it a female?)

So of course dog people are like “Well what about seeing eye dogs and drug sniffing dogs?” Well, I’m sure if cats were big enough you could have seeing eye cats since all seeing eye dogs have to do as far as I can tell is not lead their owners out into the middle of the street and fetch them beer. And yes, dogs can sniff out drugs in bags, but so can some of my high school classmates. Besides, pigs can find truffles, but you don’t see anybody talking about how smart pigs are. Now, I’m not saying my cats are Harvard material; in fact my two cats take after me and are pretty much retarded. When we first went to the shelter we saw Hawkins sleeping. In the litter box. Although to be fair to him, as we found out he didn’t know what a litter box was for. He would dig a hole in the box and take a dump on the hill of litter instead of in the hole.

Dog people respond by saying “Dog’s love is unconditional.” For instance, my sister told me a story about a dog in Japan that used to wait for its owner by a train stop. One day the owner died, but the dog refused to leave the train stop and eventually died there. Now, personally this just proves to me that dogs are stupid. Besides, I don’t want unconditional love and constant companionship in the form of something drooling on my feet. At least cats are independent and don’t have to be constantly doted on; I don’t think I would have the energy to keep up with a dog.

Of course every time my mom and sister see a puppy, they get those goo goo eyes and all they can think about is that dog. But where they see a puppy I see something that will eventually grow into a loud, barking, pooping machine. So I’ve come up with a business idea. Using genetic engineering, I’ll breed a puppy that doesn’t have a temperature slot (if you get my drift) so it can’t poop and thus dies after two weeks, about the attention span of most children nowadays when it comes to pets. I’ll sell them for $30 and become rich and famous, at which point I can hire a personal trainer. For Chewy that is.