The truth about cats and dogs?

I grew up with cats, so I understand it when people tell me that they prefer cats to dogs because cats behave more independently than dogs. Conversely, they say that cats don’t demand much of one’s time and attention. They say that you “can just let cats be” while dogs constantly seek direction from their humans. After reading a few books about dog training and about dogs and their umwelt – i.e. how they, through their senses, perceive and interact with the world as they know it – I now wonder if we humans haven’t understood it the other way around.

Modern humans put extraordinary pressure on dogs to conform their way of being to suit human society. In comparison we have a disproportionally laissez-faire approach to the upbringing of cats. Both cats and dogs are domesticated predators and scavengers. But while my colleague doesn’t mind carrying her cat off the table ten times during dinner for example (as she herself recalls), many people somehow expect dogs to “know” what’s appropriate in the human world and put a moral value on the dog’s behavior (“bad”/untrained dog) when they act in a way that we judge inappropriate.

I would bet that with structured positive reinforcement – as one does in dog training – the table-jumping cat would have decreased motivation to jump on the table for attention if she were offered something she considered valuable (such as a treat a.k.a. “reinforcer”) whenever she went off the table with a coupled command (operant conditioning). Yet we seldom think about cats this way. In fact, we humans seldom consider the double standard we put on cats and dogs. For instance, in my neighborhood there are a few people who let their cats roam at night. People don’t react negatively when they see a well-groomed cat without an owner on the street, as a leashed cat is a rarity rather than a norm. Neither would you see a “no cat allowed” sign in garden pavements, since roaming cats just basically walk themselves.

Hmm, Lea and I did see this sign in Japan. I don’t know what it says, but maybe there they assume that cats are either leashed, or can read.

In the book “In Defense of Dogs” by John Bradshaw, the author recalls a dog from his childhood who took himself for walks. His grandpa’s dog roamed the neighborhood all afternoon, by himself, like a village dog in other countries still do today. But now, in our place and time, dogs have less freedom and we humans are expected to control every aspect of their work, play and social life. I mentioned the double standard between pets to the colleague with the table-jumping cat. She attributed it to the notion that dogs are pack creatures (= needs a model and a leader) while cats are lone hunters (= with a will of their own). In my reading of books about dogs, ethologists critically discuss the pack theory, which I don’t intend on discussing just now. But even if the notion of dogs’ hierarchical structures were true, it still remains a fact that while society is more willing to accept that cats have their own minds, society is somewhat less willing to let dogs have theirs.

This relates to another thing I’ve been reading about, which is activity versus enrichment. Activity is what we aim for when we take dogs for long walks, engage them in cooperative play and train them in mind and body (e.g. nosework, agility and obedience training). It gives the dog something constructive to do so he doesn’t get busy with other mischief (such as eating your shoe due to boredom) and teaches him skills that we appreciate in the human world (such as playing dead for our entertainment – a quite useless skill for a dog in the natural world, come to think of it).   

Enrichment, on the other hand, is a concept taken from zookeeping animals in captivity. The concept seems to be broad, but basically it refers to offering animals opportunities to practice species-specific behavior that they would naturally display such as digging, climbing, seeking shade, gnawing on trees, working for food and so on. For pet dogs, this would mean offering opportunities for dog-specific behaviors, such as digging, barking, sniffing, pee marking or running free. Some of these may border in the territory of “unwanted” behaviors for humans, for example barking (which is a natural form of communication for dogs, and part of the concept of social enrichment). I have also seen videos of people offering dogs food-related enrichment by placing kibble in cardboard boxes, thus encouraging the dogs to work for their food by inevitably destroying the boxes with paws and teeth to access the food. Because I knew nothing about enrichment at that time, I thought it looked like uncontrolled destruction. Now I understand that, from the dogs’ perspective, they were problem-solving and using body parts (teeth and claws) that they would normally use to forage. The principle of enrichment posits that by giving animals an outlet for behaviors natural to them, animals exhibit less stereotypic (repetitive) behaviors such as stress-licking or tail-chasing (or whatever destructive stereotypic behavior other animals might have). For both activity and enrichment, the bottom line is that if the dog is happy, the human companions will be happier for it. In contrast to activity though, enrichment offers activities at the animals’ own premises, based on what is natural for its species.

Diesel does indeed look like a hunter while busy demolishing this twig.

Learning about enrichment really made me think about the difference between our approaches to cats (who, I believe, are more allowed by humans to display natural behavior) and dogs. Diesel is in a phase now since before Christmas, as he learned that he could bark. Though an enrichment paradigm, he is doing what is natural for him (territorial enrichment = the desire for animals to protect their home, like cats do when they roam their territory) but I also admit that, in the human perspective, some canine behaviors if left to develop may become problematic. I think it would be unnatural to expect a dog never to bark. But I am also trying strategies so he can exercise that behavior within some limits. 

From the cartoon series "They can talk"

Okay. I know I simplified a bit about cats’ freedom. My next-door neighbor has two hairless Sphynx cats who are indoors all day. As I was writing the last paragraph, I heard him in the hall cooing his cats back into his apartment. Apparently, his cats ran out the door, as they often do when he comes home. Diesel was curious behind my own closed apartment door, sniffing at the jamb and listening closely. Between my dog’s leashed walks and the indoor life of these hairless cats, one could wonder if one of them is better off than the other.