My daughter has a 12-year-old black and white female cat. Probably about 2 kilos at most. She also has a 35 kg fox-red Labrador. The cat absolutely bullies the **** out of the dog, sometimes for no reason whatsoever. Utter psycho, but simply drops on your lap or chest when you least expect it and demands to be stroked until she randomly bites you and walks away nonchalantly.
No. I've never met a cat that had anything other on its mind than how it can get what it wants. They're all four legged, control freak, killers
I'd say it's completely the other way around. Try getting a cat to save your life or answer the phone or open the washing machine or guide you round Tesco's ....
A bit of a trope/misconception about cats. Cats just show emotion in different ways that is less obvious and more subtle. Studies have shown that hungry cats would rather greet their owner that they haven't seen in a while than eat. They also absolutely will defend others they have a bond with- they will try to repair bonds if they sense anger/sadness or distance. They're just much slower to bond and typically have much fewer other animals/humans they're willing to bond with. My dogs, and most dogs would do none of those things. Specially trained dogs can be very useful. I have it on good experience that my pit-mix will run away in terror and not come home for 15 mins if someone jumps from behind a tree and shouts "boo" as we're walking in the woods.... no chance she would save my life.
God, I wish. The older they get, the more the complications, the more the insurance racks up until, for my lad's last two years, I just got basic insurance for accidents and paid for the existing conditions myself. Being a chunky 'English' Lab, he had a few conditions later in life. Labrador laryngeal paralysis was one that went from an occasional cough to almost continual hacking fits, and the almost ubiquitous arthritis that Labs develop. And believe me, vet bills shot up over here after Covid as well. That said, it wasn't as bad as one of my neighbours' dogs, an old English bulldog that was about 5 when we got Astro (not the poster!) in 2011. She was paying then £250 a month for insurance for it (Astro's was £8.50, in comparison). That's the problem with thoroughbreds - they're sometimes inbred to the point of mutants. Astro was a thoroughbred, but the difference with Labs is that the gene pool is so widely diverse. Owning a dog is not cheap here, believe me. And on top of that, Astro ****ing destroyed my kitchen when he was a pup. Little **** literally chewed through the 4-inch-thick leg of ****ing oak kitchen table, and all the knobs off the doors of the units. We were told to give him some cardboard to chew - which we did. He pissed on it and continued to demolish the furniture.
My youngest dog, the lab mix, she's had both her rear hips replaced now- costs about $5000 each... completely changed her life though... she's so much happier and energetic after replacing them. She's probably cost us more than every animal we've ever had combined...
With regard to the hungry cat greeting the owner before eating - a dog trained on command which is very easy to do (unless you have a husky which is more cat than dog ) will sit all day and all night in front of a bowl of food if not given the command to 'go on". A dog whose owner is asthmatic, for example, will fetch an inhaler that it's never been trained to do if it sees its owner in distress and in need - life saving. Similarly, an untrained dog with an epileptic owner can instinctively sense a fit coming on and warn the owner to sit down or to do whatever it is the owner needs to do to stay safe during the fit. Again, life saving. Obviously highly trained dogs can do extraordinary things in general and in regard to life saving, search and rescue being one. The other things I mentioned, picking up the phone etc. you can easily train a dog to do. As a small puppy "sit" and "give me your paw" takes about an hour. I don't know about rescue dogs, I guess older dogs will take longer to train if they are completely untrained. If you haven't got your dog bringing you your slippers when you come in, you're not trying hard enough
There are plenty of examples of cats doing extraordinary things too tbf, ok it won't roll over - but what good is that I have both and they're cool in their own ways
Or getting so excited that he runs down to the bottom of the garden with them and leaves them in a ****ing puddle. Which isn't that bad, as they're chewed to buggery and covered with dog flob anyway.
