Cats - what's the appeal?

According to a survey in November 2008 by Tesco Pet Insurance, the dog was voted the most popular pet in the UK.

Not hugely surprising, although the cat has usurped us from time to time. The cat is still massively popular as a pet and I would like to know – what’s the appeal? I can appreciate the obvious attraction - they don’t take as much looking after as us dogs. I mean, you don’t have to walk a cat every day do you? It’s not as if they’re going to trash your house if they don’t get their daily walk, as some dogs do.

I can understand the appeal as far as aesthetics go too. I’ve never seen an ugly cat – I can’t say the same thing about dogs (French Bulldogs spring to mind). A cat can drape itself on a sofa and make the sofa look as if it had been plucked from the pages of Ideal Home Magazine. Saying that, said sofa will soon be liberally covered in shedded hair and ripped to shreds if said cat is left to its own devices.

I also have to admit that kittens are the cutest thing, but as LEE said once, they have to be. Kittens, puppies, babies have to be cute in order to survive – if they weren’t they’d be dumped on a much more regular basis – there’d be a baby or a pup or a kitten deposited on one’s doorstep more frequently than milk.

I’ve heard folk say that they’re easy to housetrain too. Show a kitten a litter tray and it immediately knows what to do. But there are plenty of anomalies. My mum has a friend whose cat will only use the litter tray once a day; the rest of the time, it goes anywhere it pleases. Being a cat, and therefore rather nimble, she will regularly find his deposits on the top of wardrobes, bookshelves, windowsills and kitchen worktops.
“He’s so adorable,” she’d say when mum asked how she put up with his unsavoury antics. “He just looks at me with those big blue eyes and I melt.” In my view, cats tend to look at everyone with utter disdain and contempt, as if the object of their glare is the dirt beneath their feet.

They’re sneaky too. My mum puts birdseed out in the winter for the poor little guys and she used to put it on the top of a low wall that surrounded the patio. She kept finding dead birds and started wondering if the seed she was buying was poor quality until she noticed one day that her neighbour’s black cat was positioning himself in the undergrowth right next to the wall and waiting, unseen, for an unsuspecting little blue-tit to help itself to a sunflower seed or two. The naughty bugger would simply jump and swipe and ‘voila’ one dead birdie. Mum bought a bird-table.

That same black cat always gives me the finger when I go walking with mum. He knows she won’t let me chase stuff. He’s gotten wise. So he always manages to plant himself in a really prominent position whenever we walk past his house. He just sits there sneering and taunting.
“Come on little rat face, come and chase me if you dare, dog-breath. But you daren’t dare you? No, because mumsy-wumsy won’t let you. You’re all the same you doggy-woggy thickheads. Under the thumbs of the humans. Trying to please. Pillock brain.”

I tell you he gets my hackles up something chronic.

Then my mum was sent this clip by her cat-loving friend and I must admit, even I thought it was funny and even I could, kind of, see why some folk might think cats are appealing. You may have seen it, but even if you have, it’s still good.