Cats is better than dogs. I read that somewhere. It’s evolutionary fact. The evidence is something to do with America and when cats was brought there and the drop in the number of dog species after the cats arrived. When they say cats is better, they’re talking hunting – something about cats being better hunters and something about their retractable claws. They aint talking anything more than that.
And while I don’t think cats is better, there aint nothing in the evidence that is a surprise to me. I see cats sometimes and they can be all soft as bread dough and slumped in the sun on the path and they purr if you so much as look at ‘em. Like that a person would want to take ‘em home and love ‘em and not ever let ‘em go.
But they got a whole other side to ‘em. I seen that too. When I was washing dishes at the sink and looking out of the window and into the garden and a cat was hunting birds – birds what don’t do nothing but bless the space they is in with their song. And I screamed at the glass and my voice was no warning to the bird, and the cat, quick as a whip-crack, caught it, all broke feathers and wing, in its mouth. And the cat did that just for the fun of it and not cos it was hungry.
Dogs don’t do that. They aint so sleek or so sly. They is so filled up with soft love and they announce it to the whole world. And maybe that’s why I got me a dog. And it don’t catch no birds, though it runs for ‘em some, and it’s like a game that the dog don’t mind losing every time. And cats it chases, also, if a cat comes into the place where it is. And it don’t mean no harm chasing that cat, not till the cat stops and it spits and shows its teeth and its whole body coiled like a spring.
And you can tell a dog stuff and it’s different from telling a cat. Tell it to sit or to beg or to lie down. Cats won’t heed what you tell ‘em – maybe it’s that they just don’t understand, but maybe it’s that they do and they wont be ruled. And Marty, that’s the name of my dog, well he brings me stuff – slippers, and the newspaper when it’s delivered – bringing ‘em when he thinks I want ‘em and pleased to do it, his tail wagging like flag-day. And he lays ‘em at my feet and he don’t do that for any other reason than love. Show me a cat that loves like that.
So when they say a cat is better and they say how the number of dog species declined in America after the cat came – well, I take issue with that ‘better’. And that gets me to thinking about the whole evolutionary thing and survival of the fittest and it don’t say survival of the best. And I miss my wife then, and miss her like a part of me has been cut away – the heart maybe. And I tell Marty that I miss her and Marty gets that and he lays his head in my lap and looks up at me and his look is all sorry and sad and saying he understands; and I don’t reckon there’s a cat in this world that’d ever do that.
August 13, 2015: They were always together.
Patricia Ann McNair 
Cats is better than dogs. I read that somewhere. It’s evolutionary fact. The evidence is something to do with America and when cats was brought there and the drop in the number of dog species after the cats arrived. When they say cats is better, they’re talking hunting – something about cats being better hunters and something about their retractable claws. They aint talking anything more than that.
And while I don’t think cats is better, there aint nothing in the evidence that is a surprise to me. I see cats sometimes and they can be all soft as bread dough and slumped in the sun on the path and they purr if you so much as look at ‘em. Like that a person would want to take ‘em home and love ‘em and not ever let ‘em go.
But they got a whole other side to ‘em. I seen that too. When I was washing dishes at the sink and looking out of the window and into the garden and a cat was hunting birds – birds what don’t do nothing but bless the space they is in with their song. And I screamed at the glass and my voice was no warning to the bird, and the cat, quick as a whip-crack, caught it, all broke feathers and wing, in its mouth. And the cat did that just for the fun of it and not cos it was hungry.
Dogs don’t do that. They aint so sleek or so sly. They is so filled up with soft love and they announce it to the whole world. And maybe that’s why I got me a dog. And it don’t catch no birds, though it runs for ‘em some, and it’s like a game that the dog don’t mind losing every time. And cats it chases, also, if a cat comes into the place where it is. And it don’t mean no harm chasing that cat, not till the cat stops and it spits and shows its teeth and its whole body coiled like a spring.
And you can tell a dog stuff and it’s different from telling a cat. Tell it to sit or to beg or to lie down. Cats won’t heed what you tell ‘em – maybe it’s that they just don’t understand, but maybe it’s that they do and they wont be ruled. And Marty, that’s the name of my dog, well he brings me stuff – slippers, and the newspaper when it’s delivered – bringing ‘em when he thinks I want ‘em and pleased to do it, his tail wagging like flag-day. And he lays ‘em at my feet and he don’t do that for any other reason than love. Show me a cat that loves like that.
So when they say a cat is better and they say how the number of dog species declined in America after the cat came – well, I take issue with that ‘better’. And that gets me to thinking about the whole evolutionary thing and survival of the fittest and it don’t say survival of the best. And I miss my wife then, and miss her like a part of me has been cut away – the heart maybe. And I tell Marty that I miss her and Marty gets that and he lays his head in my lap and looks up at me and his look is all sorry and sad and saying he understands; and I don’t reckon there’s a cat in this world that’d ever do that.