Cats Are Better Than Dogs Quotes

It's funny how dogs and cats know the inside of folks better than other folks do, isn't it?

I like dogs better than men and cats better than dogs and myself best of all, drunk in my underwear looking out the window.

I couldn't remember the cats' names any better than the dogs'. Four of them were named after the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and all I could really recall was that Famine ironically weighed about thirty pounds.

It's funny how dogs and cats know the insides of folks better than other folks do, isn't it?

Cats have the curiosity of a genius, while dogs have the intellect of a sack of manure covered in hair and mulch made from bark (so loud). Actually, that assessment isn’t quite fair. Sacks of manure are smarter than dogs, and make better best friends (I should know, because I’ve lost three best friends to landscaping incidents in the last year alone, which left me alone).

I love looking for the big white moon. Seeing it change. It's better than looking at my watch. The moon has been up there watching me since the dawn I said goodbye to Abuelita, Mali, Lupe, Julia, the dog, the cat, and my parakeet. It was there with Grandpa, when Marcelo left us, when Chele and Mario ran. It reminds me of all of them. Polleros said there wouldn't be a moon, but they're wrong. Like a slice of watermelon bitten to the rind, it showed up over the mountains to our right. I like its gray light before the sun paints the dawn, our clothing changing from black to gray to blue like we're chameleons.

There was a fair mixture of animals in the long building. The dairy cows took up most of the length, then there were a few young heifers, some bullocks and finally, in an empty stall deeply bedded with straw, the other farm dogs. The cats were there too, so it had to be warm. No animal is a better judge of comfort than a cat and they were just visible as furry balls in the straw. They had the best place, up against the wooden partition where the warmth came through from the big animals.

The strident emotional belief that children made you happy, even when all the data pointed to misery. The high-amplitude fear of sharks and dark-skinned snipers who would never kill you; indifference to all the toxins and pesticides that could. The mind was so rotten with misrepresentation that in some cases it literally had to be damaged before it could make a truly rational decision—and should some brain-lesioned mother abandon her baby in a burning house in order to save two strangers from the same fire, the rest of the world would be more likely to call her a monster than laud the rationality of her lifeboat ethics. Hell, rationality itself—the exalted Human ability to reason—hadn’t evolved in the pursuit of truth but simply to win arguments, to gain control: to bend others, by means logical or sophistic, to your will. Truth had never been a priority. If believing a lie kept the genes proliferating, the system would believe that lie with all its heart. Fossil feelings. Better off without them, once you’d outgrown the savanna and decided that Truth mattered after all. But Humanity wasn’t defined by arms and legs and upright posture. Humanity had evolved at the synapse as well as at the opposable thumb—and those misleading gut feelings were the very groundwork on which the whole damn clade had been built. Capuchins felt empathy. Chimps had an innate sense of fair play. You could look into the eyes of any cat or dog and see a connection there, a legacy of common subroutines and shared emotions.

It’s funny how dogs and cats know the inside of folks better than other folks do, isn’t it?

But we take better care of our cats and dogs than we do of homeless humans in the street. If we serve as pets to aliens, might they take better care of us than we ever will of ourselves?

She happens to like girls instead of guys. Some people like cats instead of dogs. Frankly, I’d rather live with a lesbian than a cat. Unless the lesbian sheds, then I don’t know.” - Sophia

No two dogs are alike. And yet, all dogs have something in common that makes them dogs, and makes them different from cats. The same goes for men and women. The trouble starts when cats don't realize that dogs are different. Dogs think differently, and perceive the world differently, than cats do. I'm a dog. You're a cat. And a dog knows better what it's like to be a dog than a cat does.

A dog’s demonstrative behavior, far from indicating any inability to reason, is a measure of their enormous compassion, optimism, hope, and a capacity for forgiveness that should leave us all withered with shame.

When we hear the phrase “rescue animal,” we tend to think of a dog or cat being rescued by a human. But when Enzo came into my life, I learned that more often than not, the rescued animal is the human, and the rescuer usually has four legs (or sometimes three).

...if it weren't for this hyena, the sailors wouldn't have thrown me into the lifeboat and I would have stayed on the ship and I surely would have drowned; and if I had to share quarters with a wild animal, better the upfront ferocity of a dog than the power and stealth of a cat.

It’s my dogs and cats, Mr. Herriot. I’m afraid I might never see them when I’m gone and it worries me so. You see, I know I’ll be reunited with my parents and my brothers but … but …” “Well, why not with your animals?” “That’s just it.” She rocked her head on the pillow and for the first time I saw tears on her cheeks. “They say animals have no souls.” “Who says?” “Oh, I’ve read it and I know a lot of religious people believe it.” “Well I don’t believe it.” I patted the hand which still grasped mine. “If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans. You’ve nothing to worry about there.

I will take this occasion to denounce and excoriate the vile practice of riding to the hounds. So the sodden huntsmen can watch a beautiful, delicate fox torn to pieces by their stinking dogs. Heartened by this loutish spectacle, they repair to the mansion house to get drunker than they already are, no better than their filthy, fawning, shit-eating, carrion-rolling, baby-killing beasts.

This ability to feel remorse is one of the many ways in which dogs are better than cats. Cats have the morals of Hannibal Lecter. If you come home and find your cat inside your parakeet’s cage, holding your dead parakeet in its jaws, your cat will be like, “Obviously this parakeet committed suicide.” Meanwhile your dog, if you have one, will be moping around under the cage going, “I did it! I ate the bird!

How could such adoration and devotion ever be a bad thing? Because so many dog owners are unworthy of it. We are shamed by our dog’s loyalty, and we know, deep in our hearts, we will never measure up to it. In a fractured, impersonal world like ours, such a precious gift should be treasured, and yet so many of us take it for granted. Worse of all, we turn it against our dogs, repaying loyalty with mistreatment and neglect.

you do not think about the soul of your next-door neighbour. He is not a man; he is an environment. He is the barking of a dog; he is the noise of a pianola; he is a dispute about a party wall; he is drains that are worse than yours, or roses that are better than yours. Now, all these are the wrong ends of a man; and a man, like many other things in this world, such as a cat-o’-nine-tails, has a large number of wrong ends, and only one right one.

Like well-adjusted children, dogs require significant training and supervision. They must be fed, watered, and exercised every single day. They need love, lots and lots of love, and they need to know you are there for them. In other words, caring for a dog is not a hobby or a part-time responsibility – it’s a real relationship. This is somewhat true of cats, as well. The relationship maybe weirdly one-sided and kind of embarrassing, but you still have to turn up.

You probably think you know all about men, because you read a lot of romance novels, so you think you're an expert on men. But I'm gonna tell you a little secret: the men in those books are fiction. They do not at all represent how men in real life actually think. Those romance novels were written for women by women (and a few men who know what women like to read, so they write romance to make a quick buck.) When you read a book like Grey, Christian's inner monologue does not at all sound like how a man actually thinks in real life. It sounds like a woman does a poor job of imagining how a man thinks. The fictitious men in romance novels are as fake and imaginary as vampires. They're not real. Right about now, there's probably a little voice in your head, screaming: “NOOO!!! You can't say that! You can't speak for all men! Every man is different!!” True. No two dogs are alike. And yet, all dogs have something in common that makes them dogs, and makes them different from cats. The same goes for men and women. The trouble starts when cats don't realize that dogs are different. Dogs think differently, and perceive the world differently, than cats do. I'm a dog. You're a cat. And a dog knows better what it's like to be a dog than a cat does.

Watching Sunday Justice in court got Kya thinking about how her family had never had a pet. Not one dog or cat. The only thing close was the female skunk- a silky, slinky, and sassy creature- who lived under the shack. Ma called her Chanel. After a few near misses, they'd gotten to know one another, and Chanel became very polite, only flashing her armament when the kids got too rowdy. She'd come and go, sometimes within feet of whoever was coming up or down the brick 'n' boards. Every spring she'd escort her little kits on forays into the oak woods and along the slipstreams. Them scurrying behind, running into and over one another in black-and-white confusions. Pa, of course, was always threatening to get rid of her, but Jodie, showing maturity far beyond his father's, deadpanned, "Another one'll just move in, and I always reckoned it's better the skunk ya know than the skunk ya don't know.

As to Flush, he should thank you too, but at the present moment he is quite absorbed in finding a cool place in this room to lie down in, having sacrificed his usual favorite place at my feet, his head upon them, oppressed by the torrid necessity of a thermometer above 70. To Flopsy’s acquaintance he would aspire gladly, only hoping that Flopsy does not ‘delight to bark and bite,’ like dogs in general, because if he does Flush would as soon be acquainted with a cat, he says, for he does not pretend to be a hero. Poor Flush! ‘the bright summer days on which I am ever likely to take him out for a ramble over hill and meadow’ are never likely to shine! But he follows, or rather leaps into my wheeled chair, and forswears merrier company even now, to be near me. I am a good deal better, it is right to say, and look forward to a possible prospect of being better still, though I may be shut out from climbing the Brocken otherwise than in a vision.

If you need to be needed and if your family, very properly, decline to need you, a pet is the obvious substitute. You can keep it all its life in need of you. You can keep it permanently infantile, reduce it to permanent invalidism, cut it off from all genuine animal well-being, and compensate for this by creating needs for countless little indulgences which only you can grant. The unfortunate creature thus becomes very useful to the rest of the household; it acts as a sump or drain—you are too busy spoiling a dog’s life to spoil theirs. Dogs are better for this purpose than cats: a monkey, I am told, is best of all. Also it is more like the real thing. To be sure, it’s all very bad luck for the animal. But probably it cannot fully realise the wrong you have done it. Better still, you would never know if it did. The most down-trodden human, driven too far, may one day turn and blurt out a terrible truth. Animals can’t speak. Those who say ‘The more I see of men the better I like dogs’—those who find in animals a relief from the demands of human companionship—will be well advised to examine their real reasons.

It takes the better part of those months for Herr Thiessen to complete the clock. He works on little else, though the sum of money involved makes the arrangement more than manageable. Weeks are spent on the design and the mechanics. He hires an assistant to complete some of the basic woodwork, but he takes care of all the details himself. Herr Thiessen loves details and he loves a challenge. He balances the entire design on that one specific word Mr. Barris used. Dreamlike. The finished clock is resplendent. At first glance it is simply a clock, a rather large black clock with a white face and a silver pendulum. Well crafted, obviously, with intricately carved woodwork edges and a perfectly painted face, but just a clock. But that is before it is wound. Before it begins to tick, the pendulum swinging steadily and evenly. Then, then it becomes something else. The changes are slow. First, the color changes in the face, shifts from white to grey, and then there are clouds that float across it, disappearing when they reach the opposite side. Meanwhile, bits of the body of the clock expand and contract, like pieces of a puzzle. As thought clock is falling apart, slowly and gracefully. All of this takes hours. The face of the clock becomes a darker grey, and then black, with twinkling stars where the numbers had been previously. The body of the clock, which has been methodically turning itself inside out and expanding, is now entirely subtle shades of white and grey. And it is not just pieces, it is figures and objects, perfectly carved flowers and planets and tiny books with actually paper pages that turn. There is a silver dragon curls around part of the now visible clockwork, a tiny princess in a carved tower who paces in distress awaiting an absent prince. Teapots that our into teacups and minuscule curls of steam that rise from them as the seconds tick. Wrapped presents open. Small cats chase small dogs. An entire game of chess is played. At the center, where a cuckoo bird would live in a more traditional timepiece, is the juggler. Dressed in harlequin style with a grey mask, he juggles shiny silver balls that correspond to each hour. As the hour chimes, another ball joins the rest until at midnight he juggles twelve balls in a complex pattern. After midnight the clock begins once more to fold in upon itself. The face lightens and the colds return. The number of juggled balls decreases until the juggler himself vanishes. By noon it is a clock again, and no longer a dream.

Hunting parties spent weeks scouring the zone and shot all the abandoned family pets, which had begun to roam in packs. It was a necessary evil to avoid the spread of radioactivity, prevent decontamination workers from being attacked, and put the animals out of their misery. A quick death was better than slowly dying of starvation and radiation sickness. “The first time we came, the dogs were running around near their houses, guarding them, waiting for people to come back”, recounted Viktor Verzhikovskiy, Chairman of the Khoyniki Society of Volunteer Hunters and Fishermen. “They were happy to see us, they ran toward our voices. We shot them in the houses, and the barns, in the yards. We’d drag them out onto the street and load them onto the dump truck. It wasn’t very nice. They couldn’t understand: why are we killing them? They were easy to kill, they were household pets. They didn’t fear guns or people.220” They didn’t all die this way. At the beginning of June, Nikolai Goshchitsky, a visiting engineer from the Beloyarsk nuclear power station, witnessed some which had escaped the bullets. “[They] crawled, half alive, along the road, in terrible pain. Birds looked as if they had crawled out of water... unable to fly or walk... Cats with dirty fir, as if it had been burnt in places.221” Animals that had survived that long were now blind.

Poppy," she murmured, "no matter how Miss Marks tries to civilize me- and I do try to listen to her- I still have my own way of looking at the world. To me, people are scarcely different from animals. We're all God's creatures, aren't we? When I meet someone, I know immediately what animal they would be. When we first met Cam, for example, I knew he was a fox." "I suppose Cam is somewhat fox-like," Poppy said, amused. "What is Merripen? A bear?" "No, unquestionably a horse. And Amelia is a hen." "I would say an owl." "Yes, but don't you remember when one of our hens in Hampshire chased after a cow that had strayed too close to the nest? That's Amelia." Poppy grinned. "You're right." "And Win is a swan." "Am I also a bird? A lark? A robin?" "No, you're a rabbit." "A rabbit?" Poppy made a face. "I don't like that. Why am I a rabbit?" "Oh, rabbits are beautiful soft animals who love to be cuddled. They're very sociable, but they're happiest in pairs." "But their timid," Poppy protested. "Not always. They're brave enough to be companions to many other creatures. Even cats and dogs." "Well," Poppy said in resignation, "it's better than being a hedgehog, I suppose." "Miss Marks is a hedgehog," Beatrix said in a matter-of-fact tone that made Poppy grin. "And you're a ferret, aren't you, Bea?" "Yes. But I was leading to a point." "Sorry, go on." "I was going to say that Mr. Rutledge is a cat. A solitary hunter. With an apparent taste for rabbit.

That's Branton, Michigan, by the way. Don't try to find it on a map - you'd need a microscope. It's one of a dozen dinky towns north of Lansing, one of the few that doesn't sound like it was named by a French explorer. Branton, Michigan. Population: Not a Lot and Yet Still Too Many I Don't Particularly Care For. We have a shopping mall with a JCPenny and an Asian fusion place that everyone says they are dying to try even though it’s been there for three years now. Most of our other restaurants are attached to gas stations, the kind that serve rubbery purple hot dogs and sodas in buckets. There’s a statue of Francis B. Stockbridge in the center of town. He’s a Michigan state senator from prehistoric times with a beard that belongs on Rapunzel’s twin brother. He wasn’t born in Branton, of course – nobody important was ever born in Branton – but we needed a statue for the front of the courthouse and the name Stockbridge looks good on a copper plate. It’s all for show. Branton’s the kind of place that tries to pretend it’s better than it really is. It’s really the kind of place with more bars than bookstores and more churches than either, not that that’s necessarily a bad thing. It’s a place where teenagers still sometimes take baseball bats to mailboxes and wearing the wrong brand of shoes gets you at least a dirty look. It snows a lot in Branton. Like avalanches dumped from the sky. Like heaps to hills to mountains, the plows carving their paths through our neighborhood, creating alpine ranges nearly tall enough to ski down. Some of the snow mounds are so big you can build houses inside them, complete with entryways and coat closets. Restrooms are down the hall on your right. Just look for the steaming yellow hole. There’s nothing like that first Branton snow, though. Soft as a cat scruff and bleach white, so bright you can almost see your reflection in it. Then the plows come and churn up the earth underneath. The dirt and the boot tracks and the car exhaust mix together to make it all ash gray, almost black, and it sickens your stomach just to look at it. It happens everywhere, not just Branton, but here it’s something you can count on.

It is raining.  The clock ticks.  I am leaning on my elbow.  The wind blows through the cracks.  The door rattles in its frame.  My arm is tired of staying in one position.  There is a pressure on the wrist.  My temple burns on one side.  I wonder what will happen next.  Someone laughs.  If he had heard the rain, the clock, and the door, he would have kept silent.  Had I been laughing, I would not have heard these things. Gaze into a cat's eye or a gorilla's.  You will notice a peculiar thing that will make you shudder.  sometimes cats claw at human eyes.  Some- times gorillas enrage. Telepathy and death are wound inextricably together.  To see why this is so, you must understand consciousness.  When, late at night in your bed, you hear a distant automobile, you and the driver are parts of yourself.  When you speak, you are alone and the listener is both you and himself.  Two men, one on the mountain and the other in the village, cannot communicate.  Each is looking into a mirror.  Wave, and *he* waves - shout, and *he* replies.  All of us see the same moon and feel the same heartbeat, but we can never admit it.  One says the moon is a pale disc, another that it is a satellite of the Earth, a third that it is a silver world.  My heart thumps, yours clatters, and his booms.  Consciousness is distortion. But much telepathy passes unnoticed.  Dogs in the night, a dream of Mabel, Dr. Rhines' dice games - these are self-conscious tricks that mean nothing.  What of the more obvious examples?  You know when another is lying.  You know who is going down the stair.  You know emotion without seeing it.  You know the intelligence of others.  Some sign gives them away.  It is coincidence?  Guessing games again?   Then think of what you could not possibly know, what no one could tell you.  Is there any doubt you do not know that fellow on the gibbet or the thought of that girl on the stake?  Watch someone die and you may read his mind at ease. You need not got so far.  We human beings understand one another better than we think.  Argue, deny, shout, denounce, destroy.  Nothing alters truth.  You, reader, see my flaws and concentrate on them.  You wonder why I choose this word and not that. My arguments are weak and you can drum up stronger ones against them.  But we are eye to eye for all of that.

The Golem If (as affirms the Greek in the Cratylus) the name is archetype of the thing, in the letters of “rose” is the rose, and all the Nile flows through the word. Made of consonants and vowels, there is a terrible Name, that in its essence encodes God’s all, power, guarded in letters, in hidden syllables. Adam and the stars knew it in the Garden. It was corroded by sin (the Cabalists say), time erased it, and generations have forgotten. The artifice and candor of man go on without end. We know that there was a time in which the people of God searched for the Name through the ghetto’s midnight hours. But not in that manner of those others whose vague shades insinuate into vague history, his memory is still green and lives, Judá the Lion the rabbi of Prague. In his thirst to know the knowledge of God Judá permutated the alphabet through complex variations and in the end pronounced the name that is the Key the Door, the Echo, the Guest, and the Palace, over a mannequin shaped with awkward hands, teaching it the arcane knowledge of symbols, of Time and Space. The simulacrum raised its sleepy eyelids, saw forms and colors that it did not understand, and confused by our babble made fearful movements. Gradually it was seen to be (as we are) imprisoned in a reverberating net of Before, Later, Yesterday, While, Now, Right, Left, I, You, Those, Others. The Cabalists who celebrated this mysterium, this vast creature, named it Golem. (Written about by Scholem, in a learned passage of his volume.) The rabbi explained the universe to him, “This is my foot, this yours, and this the rope,” but all that happened, after years, was that the creature swept the synagogue badly. Perhaps there was an error in the word or in the articulation of the Sacred Name; in spite of the highest esoteric arts this apprentice of man did not learn to speak. Its eyes uncanny, less like man than dog and much less than dog but thing following the rabbi through the doubtful shadows of the stones of its confinement. There was something abnormal and coarse in the Golem, at its step the rabbi’s cat fled in fear. (That cat not from Scholem but of the blind seer) It would ape the rabbi’s devotions, raising its hands to the sky, or bend over, stupidly smiling, into hollow Eastern salaams. The rabbi watched it tenderly but with some horror. How (he said) could I engender this laborious son? Better to have done nothing, this is insanity. Why did I give to the infinite series a symbol more? To the coiled skein on which the eternal thing is wound, I gave another cause, another effect, another grief. In this hour of anguish and vague light, on the Golem our eyes have stopped. Who will say the things to us that God felt, at the sight of his rabbi in Prague?

you’re a rabbit.” “A rabbit?” Poppy made a face. “I don’t like that. Why am I a rabbit?” “Oh, rabbits are beautiful soft animals who love to be cuddled. They’re very sociable, but they’re happiest in pairs.” “But they’re timid,” Poppy protested. “Not always. They’re brave enough to be companions to many other creatures. Even cats and dogs.” “Well,” Poppy said in resignation, “it’s better than being a hedgehog, I suppose.” “Miss Marks is a hedgehog,” Beatrix said in a matter-of-fact tone that made Poppy grin. “And you’re a ferret, aren’t you, Bea?” “Yes. But I was leading to a point.” “Sorry, go on.” “I was going to say that Mr. Rutledge is a cat. A solitary hunter. With an apparent taste for rabbit.

We can see American English downtown in any city in the States. We would look up a block of “apartments” to a “penthouse,” be deluged by the “mass media,” go into a “chain store,” breakfast on “cornflakes,” avoid the “hot dog,” see the “commuters” walking under strips of “neon,” not “jaywalking,” which would be “moronic,” but if they were “executives” or “go-getters” (not “yes-men” or “fat cats”), they would be after “big business,” though unlikely to have much to do with an “assembly line” or a “closed shop.” There’s likely to be a “traffic jam,” so no “speeding,” certainly no space for “joy-riding” and the more “underpasses” the better. And of course in any downtown city we would be surrounded by a high forest of “skyscrapers.” “Skyscraper” started life as an English naval term — a high light sail to catch the breeze in calm conditions. It was the name of the Derby winner in 1788, after which tall houses became generally called skyscrapers. Later it was a kind of hat, then slang for a very tall person. The word arrived in America as a baseball term, meaning a ball hit high in the air. Now its world meaning is very tall building, as typified by those in American cities. Then you could go into a “hotel” (originally French for a large private house) and find a “lobby” (adopted from English), find the “desk clerk” and the “bell boy,” nod to the “hat-check girl” as you go to the “elevator.” Turn on the television, flick it all about and you’re bound to find some “gangsters” with their “floozies” in their “glad rags.” In your bedroom, where the English would have “bedclothes,” the Americans have “covers”; instead of a “dressing gown” you’ll find a “bathrobe,” “drapes” rather than “curtains,” a “closet” not a “wardrobe,” and in the bathroom a “tub” with a “faucet” and not a “bath” with a “tap.

You like needy, you get a dog. I don’t like that crap, I got a cat.

Behind its spectacular topographical façade and under its polished, semi-fashionable surface, Stockholm had become an asphalt jungle, where drug addiction and sexual perversion ran more rampant than ever. Unscrupulous profiteers could make enormous profits quite legally on pornography of the smuttiest kind. Professional criminals became not only more numerous but also better organized. An impoverished proletariat was also being created, especially among the elderly. Inflation had given rise to one of the highest costs of living in the world, and the latest surveys showed that many pensioners had to live on dog and cat food in order to make ends meet. The fact that juvenile delinquency and alcoholism (which had always been a problem) continued to increase surprised no one but those with responsible positions in the Civil Service and at the Cabinet level. Stockholm.

It’s easier to like animals than people, and there’s a reason for that. When animals make a stupid mistake, you laugh at them. A cat misjudges a leap. A dog looks overly quizzical about a simple object. These are funny things. But when a person doesn’t understand something, if they miscalculate and hit the brakes too late, blame is assigned. They are stupid. They are wrong. Teachers and cops are there to sort it out, with a trail of paperwork to illustrate the stupidity. The faults. The evidence and incidents of these things. We have entire systems in place to help decide who is what. Sometimes the systems don’t work. Families spend their weekend afternoons at animal shelters, even when they’re not looking for a pet. They come to see the unwanted and unloved. The cats and dogs who don’t understand why they are these things. They are petted and combed, walked and fed, cooed over and kissed. Then they go back in their cages and sometimes tears are shed. Fuzzy faces peering through bars can be unbearable for many. Change the face to a human one and the reaction changes. The reason why is because people should know better. But our logic is skewed in this respect. A dog that bites is a dead dog. First day at the shelter and I already saw one put to sleep, which in itself is a misleading phrase. Sleep implies that you have the option of waking up. Once their bodies pass unconsciousness to something deeper where systems start to fail, they revolt a little bit, put up a fight on a molecular level. They kick. They cry. They don’t want to go. And this happens because their jaws closed over a human hand, ever so briefly. Maybe even just the once. But people, they get chances. They get the benefit of the doubt. Even though they have the higher logic functioning and they knew when they did it THEY KNEW it was a bad thing.

The bloodhound is also an ace at locating cats, although Coldiron says that when they are working in Southern California, most felines have met their fate at the hands of predators by the time she is asked to help. There is comfort nevertheless: “People call me when they want closure,” she explains. “It’s so much better to know than still be wondering, five years later.

Looking back, I think that maybe the whole thing about liking and loving isn’t that having one word is better, or worse, than having two. It’s more that, perhaps, we actually need loads more words. It’s that we really need so many words to properly describe all the different kinds of love that having one, or just two, is neither here nor there. Because there’s the love you feel for your mother, the woman who gave birth to you, who you depended on, and the love you feel for your father, and they are entirely different kinds of love. There’s the love you feel for a brother or sister, and the fierce protective – hurt them and I will kill you – love you feel for your kids. There’s love for friends, who make you laugh and feel good about yourself – and love for just about any other human you see suffering on the news. There’s romantic, sexy love, that makes you want to get so close that you end up making babies, and the inexplicable love you have for an old cat or dog you’ve had for years. My point is, I suppose, that the list just goes on and on. And somewhere in that rainbow list of things we don’t have words for there’s a special kind of hormone-swamped love that a mother feels for a man when she sees him curled protectively round her sleeping child. That one’s a particularly nice kind of love. And a bloody powerful one, too. FIVE

She was better with animals than people. Give her a sick cat or dog, she was golden. Not so much with her own species.

but why should we have dominion? Are we better than the dog that stays by a master who forgets to notice him? Than the cat who lays the mouse at your door when she is hungry and could have eaten it herself? Than a horse who will keep galloping to please you until its lungs have given out?

cats were better than dogs,

Filthy-minded old bastard,' he muttered viciously under his breath. No wonder the world such a rotten place, rotten and filthy and cheap and smelly. Where is that place they talk of and paint nice pictures of and described in all the homey magazines? Where is that place with the clean, white cottages surrounding the new, red brick church with the clean, white steeple, were the families all have two children, one boy and one girl, and a shiny new car in the garage and a dog and a cat and life is like living in the land of the happily-ever-after? Surely it must be around here someplace, someplace in America. Or is it just that it's not for me? Maybe I dealt myself out, but what about that young kid on Burnside who was in the army and found it wasn't enough so that he has to keep proving to everyone who comes in for a cup of coffee that he was fighting for his country like the button on his shirt says he did because the army didn't do anything about his face to make him look more American? And what about the poor niggers on Jackson Street who can't find anything better to do than spit on the sidewalk and show me the way to Tokyo? They're on the outside looking in, just like that kid and just like me and just like everybody else I’ve ever seen or known. Even Mr. Carrick. Why isn't he in? Why is he on the outside squandering his goodness on outcasts like me? Maybe the answer is that there is no in. Maybe the whole damn country is pushing and shoving and screaming to get into some place that doesn't exist, because they don't know that the outside could be the inside if only they would stop all this pushing and shoving and screaming, and they haven't got enough sense to realise that. That makes sense. I've got the answer all figured out, simple and neat, and sensible.

Results of a recent survey of 74 chief executive officers indicate that there may be a link between childhood pet ownership and future career success. Fully 94% of the CEOs, all of them employed within Fortune 500 companies, had possessed a dog, a cat, or both, as youngsters. The respondents asserted that pet ownership had helped them to develop many of the positive character traits that make them good managers today, including responsibility, empathy, respect for other living beings, generosity, and good communication skills. For all we know, more than 94% of children raised in the backgrounds from which chief executives come had pets, in which case the direction of dependency would be negative. Maybe executive success is really related to tooth brushing during childhood. Probably all chief executives brushed their teeth, at least occasionally, and we might imagine the self-discipline thus acquired led to their business success. That seems more reasonable than the speculation that “communication skills” gained through interacting with a childhood pet promote better relationships with other executives and employees.

One dark day we will wake to find a suffocating blanket of cats has covered the entire globe like a mewling funeral shroud.

Caring for a dog, on the other hand, requires a great deal more effort. It’s not nearly as challenging as raising a child, but it’s a whole lot harder than making pizza from scratch. The rewards are far greater, but so is the mess.

In modern history has one central tenet, it is that the masses will embrace anything if it’s cheap and easy. This is our fundamental weakness and will almost certainly lure the entire human race to its doom. Thermonuclear Armageddon would require far too much cerebral effort – our collective fate is a bear trap baited with a cheeseburger.

Dogs consistently win the part of square-jawed hero and sympathetic ear, while cats compete vigorously with British character actors for the role of effete villain, whining sidekick, and insufferable snob. Is this grossly unfair? I think not. By deed and association, cats have won a most unenviable reputation due to their predilection for uncivil disobedience and conditional affection.

In the USA last year, some ten million lost and forgotten cats and dogs ended up in shelters. The records tell us that stray cats are fifteen times less likely to be claimed from the shelters by their owners than dogs and are also at least 30 percent less likely to be adopted by new owners. As a result, cats made up most of the five million abandoned pets who never found another loving home and thus, after a short and terrifying period of confusion, were euthanized via lethal injection. There is no truer measure of our relationship with cats and dogs than this heartbreaking statistic.

But not all cat lovers are pudgy, masochistic loners who lack energy and self-respect to have a dog. Some are simply evil.

It seemed as if doggystyle was her favorite position because she couldn't see who was behind her. She kept playing Snoop Dogg's song, “What's My Name?”. It seemed as if she was referring to my signature being forged and still being on the club and she knew perfectly. As if she was referring to all the dogs eager to breed in the video running after something after someone had let them out. As Snoop Dogg is magically transforming into a Doberman dog in the music video, just like the kind of dogs the Nazis had. I just realize Martina’s dog, Chicha was all black and her cat Anouki was all black too, just like the night Sky, just like the dark, empty, cold Space. The total darkness the canvas, on which our planet is just a pinhead. This rock. This sizzling rock. Spinning. Turning. Leaning. Following the Sun. Lost in the infinite nothingness. Ain’t like a balloon which has nothing inside. All the nothing is outside, all the cold and dark and wide and empty and vile. All the dark forces all the nights, all the known universe and beyond, is located here, inside. Iron comes from Outer Space, it is not a local material on this planet. Each one of us has iron inside a “kickstart-molecule” located in our hearts. Without iron, there would be no life. Are we locals on this planet? To what degree? Since when? I noticed three members of the Camorra in our street and the street parallel to it, casually passing by. I even nodded to one or two of them, since we already knew each other from the club where I hadn't been since Adam and I had our disagreement. Later that night, while I was waiting for Martina in vain, I noticed two to three of the Camorra's soldiers living a few houses down our street. From the rooftop, and our bedroom that was higher than theirs, I could see into their living room. I couldn't help but wonder whether this was a mere coincidence, or if Adam and Martina had found our new home together, hanging out in Nico’s store, and so we moved on the Mountain of Jews, on purpose, perhaps, knowing that the Camorra’s men were living almost right in front of us. No accidents. When I told Martina about the Camorra’s guys living across the street, Martina couldn’t have cared less. It was almost as if she never considered her life being in danger in Barcelona, Europe, but only mine. I had felt before like Adam had used my skin to make money, while I was the one walking around the streets, spotting tourists usually having fun, not thinking about how I was working hard to make their “unreachable” happiness come true. This time, however, I felt both stuck in our home, feeling helpless to make Martina happy and the outside world offered her much better chances to have fun and find a rich guy or any other smoker club manager with her beauty.

He was making up for it now, even if only to himself, because he still felt impelled to put on a good face for the world, it seemed bad manners to do otherwise. 'If you can't say something nice.', his mother had tutored him, 'then don't say anything at all.' The hair was real. Crystal had no idea who it had once belonged to. She'd worried it might have come from a corpse but her hairdresser said, 'Nah, from a temple in India. The women shave their heads for some kind of religious thing and the monks sell it.' That's how Crystal referred to it - 'Got your head stuck in a book again, Harry?' It would be funny if his head did actually get stuck in a book. Her heart wasn't shattered, just cracked, although cracked was bad enough. "Are you Mrs Bragg?' Reggie asked. "Maybe," the woman said. Well, you either are or you aren't. Reggie thought. You're not Schrodinger's cat. What do you call a nest of lesbians? A dyke eyrie. "Great,' she said, so he knew she wasn't listening. An increasing number of people, Jackson had noticed lately, were not listening to him. Dogs, you know, stay by their master's side after they've died. Fido, Hachiko, Ruswrap, Old Shep, Squeak, Spot. There was a list on Wikipedia. I am the repository of useless knowledge. Jackson had never really seen the point of existential angst. if you didn't like something you changed it and if you couldn't change it you sucked it up and soldiered on, one foot after the other. ('Remind me not to come to you for therapy,' Julia said.) This was better, Jackson thought, all he had to do was utilize the lyrics from country songs, they contained better advice than anything he could conjure up himself. Best to avoid Hank, though - 'I'm so lonesome I could cry. I'll never get out of this world alive. I don't care if tomorrow never comes. Poor old Hank, not good mental fodder of a man who had just tried to jump off a cliff. 'Diaeresis - the two little dots above the "e", its not an umlaut. Reggie thought if a day would ever goes by when she is not disappointed in people. "Jesus Christ, Crystal,' he said, dropping the baseball bat and pulling off his shoes, prepare to jump in and save Tommy. So he could kill him later.

Then you found Mr. Rutledge unsettling, too?” “No, but I understand why you do. He watches you like one of those ambushing sort of predators. The kind that lie in wait before they spring.” “How dramatic,” Poppy said with a dismissive laugh. “He’s not a predator, Bea. He’s only a man.” Beatrix made no reply, only made a project of smoothing Dodger’s fur. As she leaned over him, he strained upward and kissed her nose affectionately. “Poppy,” she murmured, “no matter how Miss Marks tries to civilize me—and I do try to listen to her—I still have my own way of looking at the world. To me, people are scarcely different from animals. We’re all God’s creatures, aren’t we? When I meet someone, I know immediately what animal they would be. When we first met Cam, for example, I knew he was a fox.” “I suppose Cam is somewhat fox-like,” Poppy said, amused. “What is Merripen? A bear?” “No, unquestionably a horse. And Amelia is a hen.” “I would say an owl.” “Yes, but don’t you remember when one of our hens in Hampshire chased after a cow that had strayed too close to the nest? That’s Amelia.” Poppy grinned. “You’re right.” “And Win is a swan.” “Am I also a bird? A lark? A robin?” “No, you’re a rabbit.” “A rabbit?” Poppy made a face. “I don’t like that. Why am I a rabbit?” “Oh, rabbits are beautiful soft animals who love to be cuddled. They’re very sociable, but they’re happiest in pairs.” “But they’re timid,” Poppy protested. “Not always. They’re brave enough to be companions to many other creatures. Even cats and dogs.” “Well,” Poppy said in resignation, “it’s better than being a hedgehog, I suppose.” “Miss Marks is a hedgehog,” Beatrix said in a matter-of-fact tone that made Poppy grin. “And you’re a ferret, aren’t you, Bea?” “Yes. But I was leading to a point.” “Sorry, go on.” “I was going to say that Mr. Rutledge is a cat. A solitary hunter. With an apparent taste for rabbit.” Poppy blinked in bewilderment. “You think he is interested in . . . Oh, but Bea, I’m not at all . . . and I don’t think I’ll ever see him again . . .” “I hope you’re right.” Settling on her side, Poppy watched her sister in the flickering glow of the hearth, while a chill of uneasiness penetrated the very marrow of her bones. Not because she feared Harry Rutledge. Because she liked him.

Poppy,” she murmured, “no matter how Miss Marks tries to civilize me—and I do try to listen to her—I still have my own way of looking at the world. To me, people are scarcely different from animals. We’re all God’s creatures, aren’t we? When I meet someone, I know immediately what animal they would be. When we first met Cam, for example, I knew he was a fox.” “I suppose Cam is somewhat fox-like,” Poppy said, amused. “What is Merripen? A bear?” “No, unquestionably a horse. And Amelia is a hen.” “I would say an owl.” “Yes, but don’t you remember when one of our hens in Hampshire chased after a cow that had strayed too close to the nest? That’s Amelia.” Poppy grinned. “You’re right.” “And Win is a swan.” “Am I also a bird? A lark? A robin?” “No, you’re a rabbit.” “A rabbit?” Poppy made a face. “I don’t like that. Why am I a rabbit?” “Oh, rabbits are beautiful soft animals who love to be cuddled. They’re very sociable, but they’re happiest in pairs.” “But they’re timid,” Poppy protested. “Not always. They’re brave enough to be companions to many other creatures. Even cats and dogs.” “Well,” Poppy said in resignation, “it’s better than being a hedgehog, I suppose.” “Miss Marks is a hedgehog,” Beatrix said in a matter-of-fact tone that made Poppy grin. “And you’re a ferret, aren’t you, Bea?” “Yes. But I was leading to a point.” “Sorry, go on.” “I was going to say that Mr. Rutledge is a cat. A solitary hunter. With an apparent taste for rabbit.” Poppy blinked in bewilderment. “You think he is interested in . . . Oh, but Bea, I’m not at all . . . and I don’t think I’ll ever see him again . . .” “I hope you’re right.

...he will accompany us on a hike in the hills, leaping and whizzing back and forth, and coming when called as well as a dog. It is just that the organism, the whole pattern of nerve and muscle, is more complex and intelligent than logical systems of arithmetic, geometry and grammar - which are in fact nothing but inferior ritual. Life itself dances, for what else are trees, ferns, butterflies, and snakes but elaborate forms of dancing? Even wood and bones show, in their structure, the characteristic patterns of flowing water, which (as Lao-tzu pointed out in 400 B.C.) derives its incredible power by following gravity and seeking that "lowest level which all men abhor." When dance I do not think-count my steps, and some women say I have no sense of rhythm, but I have a daughter who (without ever having taken lessons in dancing) can follow me as if she were my shadow or I were hers. The whole secret of life and of creative energy consists in flowing with gravity. Even when he leaps and bounces our cat is going with it. This is the way the whole earth and everything in the universe beehives.* But man is making a mess of the earth be- *Harrumph! Excuse the pun, but it is important, because bees live in hexagonal as distinct from quadrilateral structures, and this is the natural way in which all things, such as bubbles and pebbles, congregate, nestling into each other by gravity. It will follow, because 2 x 6 is 12, that - as Buckminster Fuller has pointed out - as number-system to the base 12 (duodecimal) is closer to nature than one to the base of 10 (decimal). For 12 is divisible by both 2 and 3, whereas 10 is not. After all, we use the base 12 for measuring circles and spheres and time, and so can "think circles" around people who use only meters. The world is better duodecimal than decimated.

Dogs are the best. They’re much better than cats. If you want to know why cats are worse than Death Eaters, check out Facts about Cats by Sadler Mars.

Despite the perma-shock in which many of us have lived our entire lives, with alarms in our ears made only more shrill by 24 hour news cycles, and unrelenting internet death row photos of dogs and cats at animal shelters, we inexplicably expect our shocking truths--that ours is a society built on oppression, rape and murder--to get heard the first time through. When the truths aren't heard, we end up beyond frustrated. We butt up against other people's moral hypocrisies and shut down as we hear the same stories about people who are compassionate but still eat animals. We grow weary of taking people's hands and walking them down the road to see the more than 23 million chickens killed for food every day in the U.S. And we forget that people can't see the animals hiding in their words and signifiers; we forget that we can't see them either. Beyond beef and bacon, there are other words that hide animals: deforestation, road construction, housing development, war. We must learn to be attuned to those words. And we have to learn how to speak kindly to people who are thinking about them, even if they don't recognize the absent referents in their speech. When we are thinking about how oppressors have guns, prisons, and slaughterhouses, we remember that words are weapons. When we turn them on each other and our potential allies, we forget. Out of frustration over all the things that haven't gotten better, we resort to name calling, dismiss the possibility of bridge building with other movements and within our own, and retreat back to internet cliques to discuss cupcake recipes or bash something read in the Huffington Post.

Cat love is genuine, because it's 10 percent devotion and 90 percent frustration and betrayal. - 67 REASONS WHY CATS ARE BETTER THAN DOGS