Dogs and Cats Living Together
“Let Hercules himself do what he may,
The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.”
I like that Shakespeare mentioned cats and dogs together in Hamlet’s speech to Laertes, because popular culture likes to keep them separate, splitting people into two distinct groups: cat people and dog people.
This division began long before the 1980s, but the doomsday scenario of cats and dogs living together was famously likened to mass hysteria by Dr. Peter Venkman (aka Bill Murray) in the 1984 film Ghostbusters:
I have to admit that for most of my life, I’ve been in the “dog person” camp. When I was 1 year old, my dad brought home a sweet German Shepherd who couldn’t cut it as a K-9 in the police department, and we were best friends for the full 12 years of her life. I remember riding on her back, cuddling with her while reading books, and sitting in a plastic baby pool together.
We never had cats, so I learned early on that dogs were man’s (and woman’s) best friend. Why would I look elsewhere, especially to cats? Wasn’t that species notoriously antisocial and lazy?
My opinion changed last year when our daughters brought home two kittens from my sister’s farm. The girls had high hopes for friendship and social interaction with their new pets, but my husband and I were not so sure, given the negative view we, like most non-cat-owners, held of those finicky felines.
Needless to say, we were wrong.
The kittens, named Remy and Dusty, are fun-loving, sociable, smart, open-minded, affectionate, and always entertaining.
Dusty (left) and Remy (right)
The whole family is constantly amazed by their insatiable curiosity and their “up for anything” attitude. We knew that they considered us part of the family, too, when they brought gifts (a dead mouse and a dead mole) to the back door, where they lay beside their trophies as if to say, “See, its not that hard, family members, you should try catching your own food, too. Don’t worry, we’ll show you how, because we are your family and we love you.”
Each morning they greet our miniature Schnauzer, Baby, (I wrote a blog post about her earlier this year) by rubbing against her front legs and touching noses with her. Despite their significant age difference (11 years), Baby and the kittens get along swimmingly.
How could I have been so misled by society to believe that dogs were the only proper 4-legged domesticated pets for humans?
This answer to this question was inadvertently pointed out to me by Dougall Fraser. (I’ve mentioned Dougall in my blog posts before – he is a wonderful human being with an enormous heart and sweet spirit). Dougall recently posted an online interview with George Lizos, who made some points about masculine energy, feminine energy, and the ways that societies have favored one over the other for thousands of years.
Masculine energy? Feminine energy? Dogs? Cats?
Hmmm.
Lizos’ argument is that the male-dominated paradigm in power for millennia has run its course, and with the recent surge in female empowerment, he believes that we should not let the pendulum swing so far in the other direction that we demonize the masculine energy in order to support the long-suppressed female energy.
For more on his theory, and why he is uniquely suited to make the point, see his book “Lightworkers Gotta Work.”
I just finished that book, and I think Lizos’ call for balance of the masculine and feminine energies is right on point.
It’s sort of like dogs and cats living together.
We don’t have to be “dog people” or “cat people,” we can just be “people.”
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