Cat People vs. Dog People

Hello Rebel, and welcome back to my life.

Of all the great dichotomies in life, perhaps none in human society is starker than the divide between cat people versus dog people.

No one is allowed to be neutral in this debate. Everyone has to choose a side and anyone who claims not to be one or the other is lying to you.

(And probably to themselves.)

I do love both dogs and cats. But gun to head, I’m a dog person.

I don’t dislike cats at all. I’ve had several in my life, and I want to get another one when I can get one, but I really, REALLY love dogs.

So much so that I got our current dog, Chewbacca, when we had JUST HAD our second child, Luke. He was literally only weeks old.

My wife was not super happy. But she understood. Because I’ve always loved dogs and they’re a big part of my life.

A small part of my love for dogs is built out of this survivalist instinct I’ve never been able to fully rid myself of.

I’m not a big doomsday prepper or anything. I don’t stock up on weapons and MRE's in case society collapses and we all have to fend for ourselves.

But if that scenario WERE ever to happen — you definitely want a dog, not a cat.

A dog will stick with you, it has some defensive capability, it can sense trouble, it’s an excellent guard animal.

Whereas cats…yeah, that’s not a thing.

I mean, let’s face it. If the world were to end, a cat would probably just peace out.

“See ya, suckers. I can feed myself, I’m not gonna waste my time looking after you, too.”

Like I said, this isn’t the primary reason I’m more of a dog person than a cat person. But it does highlight one of my favorite things about dogs.

They’re loyal pack animals. They love you and their whole family. They’ve got your back.

Cats are more self-serving noblemen who permit your existence.

Except that — speaking honestly for a moment — neither one of them are those things. Or at least, it isn’t really that simple.

The biggest part of the different “personalities” of cats versus dogs is not something inherent in the animals themselves, but in how we perceive their actions.

Both of them are animals whose primary purposes in life are to find food and shelter and reproduce. When you boil it right down, that’s what they both like to do.

But we perceive the way they go about it differently in the context of how we ourselves behave as human beings.

Not to mention the fact that, even within the many breeds of cats and dogs, individuals of each species can behave radically different from each other.

I wouldn’t necessarily call it a personality, but cats and dogs definitely have different behavior patterns, animal to animal.

And just like the animals themselves, two cat people can BE cat people for WILDLY different reasons. And the same is true for dog people.

In fact, I’ve met a dog person who WAS a dog person for the same reason that a cat person was a cat person.

The dog person loved dogs because they thought dogs were more intelligent and the cat person was a cat person because they thought cats were more intelligent.

What type of domesticated animal we prefer is just one of the many, many ways we choose to identify ourselves, one more way we orient our experiences to the rest of the world and say, “This is who I am.”

And in the end, I think whether we identify as a dog person or a cat person doesn’t say as much about us, as it says about how we perceive these animals and impose our own personalities on them.

That’s it for me today, Rebel. Check out my Patreon if you want to see my secret weekend videos. Oooh!

Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you next time. Byyye!