this ain't livin'

Cat Men

The New York Times has a great fluff piece (forgive me) up about men who live with cats. The basic thrust of the piece is that single men are a growing demographic of cat guardians, and, you know, “isn’t that interesting?!” But I think the article speaks to some deeper issues in society, not the least of which is that people are starting to recognize that dogs suck.

Sorry. What people are starting to realize is that keeping a dog confined in an urban environment is inhumane. Dogs in the city may be trendy, but it’s rather unkind to keep a dog, especially when you are a single professional, because the dog is locked at home all day, and rarely gets enough exercise, and is generally frustrated. Dogs are high maintenance, working animals. They are not meant to live in hipster apartments. For single city dwellers, cats are definitely the way to go.

Also, they really do suck.

Anyway, I thought it was an interesting article, because in addition to exploring the obvious advantages of cat ownership over dog ownership (cat owners who go on trips fill the water bowl and head out, dog owners must find a pet sitter, cat owners don’t need to walk their animals to poo, cat owners don’t need to worry about barking, etc etc), the article was also an exploration of masculinity.

I think that the nature of being a man is really changing in American society, and making some pretty radical shifts. Not being a man, I don’t want to get too in-depth here, but I think that a lot of these changes are pretty obvious. Our expectations of men are changing, as is the definition of what a “good” man is. And cats, as this article points out, are part of that shift. Cat people are very different from dog people, and besotted cat people are even more different.

As the article points out, cats have been associated with some of the most rugged, manly men in history, like Hemingway and Twain. Yet, in the late 20th century, cats came to be regarded as effiminate pets, even though they really aren’t. So it’s neat to see cats worming their way back onto the laps of single men, especially since, being a cat person, I don’t really like to hang out with dog people. There’s a fundamental difference in mindset between people who like capricious, independent, free-thinking animals in their homes, and people who like needy, whiny, high-maintenance animals around.

Cat people like spontaneous trips, and they are perfectly fine doing their own thing. Dog people need rigid order, and lots of planning, and they must adhere to schedules to satisfy their pets. I’m glad to see cat men on the rise in the world: after all, they say that God created the cat so that man might caress the tiger.

Tags: animals