Piss Off

I bet you think your dog is so smart but you’re wrong. Oh, sure, your dog looks and acts like it has more than a Twinkie sized brain, but the majority of that space is taken up with cues to sniff other dogs' asses and humans' genitals. Dogs are cute and friendly and good company, but at the end of the day, they are animals who just might be willing to eat the indiscriminate piece of shit found on the daily walk. Remember that the next time you let your dog give you some open mouth kisses.

Sure, you can train your dog to do tricks. Sit, stay, play dead, roll over. Fascinating stuff really. Throw a Frisbee and your dog might leap in the air and catch it. Same with a stick, although some dogs will forget to bring it back to you, opting instead to gnaw it to splinters. You can also take your dog to obedience school, so it can learn to obey you. But really, you are just working on controlling its animal urges. Don’t chase squirrels. Don’t eat the furniture when I go to work. Don’t run into oncoming traffic. Don't crap in my bed.

I don’t disagree that some dogs are irresistibly cute, or that the companionship of a loyal and loving dog rivals the company of most humans. But cats, they are not.

Cats might not have the same number of tricks, but that’s because they aren’t just sitting around thinking of ways to make you happy. They have better things to do. Cute backyard animals need to be stalked. Naps need to be taken. Shoelaces need to be eaten.  Fetch the paper? Ain’t nobody got time for that!

I’m not saying all cats are smarter than all dogs, although in some ways, they might be. When you get a kitten, you bring it home and show it where the food bowl is, then sit it in the kitty litter. If it steps out of the litter, you pick it up and set it back in the litter box. After doing that three or four times, Bam! Your cat is litter trained. Compare that to a puppy, with its puppy pads and newspapers on the floor and nose rubbing in piles of excrement and so on and so forth.

I suppose the argument can be made that you also are litter trained since you are the one who has to clean out the box. But how is that any different than walking around the neighborhood with a little grocery bag of feces that you picked up in said bag moments after it left your dog’s intestines? When I scoop the litter, it’s all nice and buried and litter covered like an Almond Roca. When you pick up your dog’s crap, you can feel the heat and the texture of the bowel movement through the plastic bag on your hand.

Some cats can even be trained to use the toilet. They sell toilet training kits at pet stores and online, and through a series of steps, your cat can learn to perch atop a toilet seat and do its business in an efficient and tidy manner. Isn’t that a better trick than catching a tennis ball?

My cat has taken her ability to learn valuable life skills even further than the average cat, which exhibits more intelligence than the average dog. Nay, I would put my cat up against your potty training toddler. Not only is my cat toilet trained, but she TRAINED HERSELF. She has observed her human owners using a proper western toilet for years, and she decided one day that she could do that too. Since then, she hasn’t looked back, turning her nose up at relieving herself on clay pellets to opt for the clean experience of peeing in the porcelain god.

I was folding laundry early in the morning the first time I witnessed my cat’s amazing skill. There I was, bent over the dryer searching for socks, when she stepped into the laundry room, hopped up onto the toilet seat, and urinated. I woke up my husband and told him, “It’s a miracle! The cat just peed in the toilet!” He didn’t believe me and rolled over to go back to sleep. A few weeks later, my younger daughter and I were again in the laundry room when the cat peed in the toilet in front of us. “I told you so!” I shouted indignantly, since no one in the family believed me.

Since then, we have all witnessed the cat in the act of number one. In fact, if you are sitting downstairs, you can hear her peeing in the upstairs laundry room john, which we now refer to as the cat’s toilet. No, she does not wipe, nor can she flush it herself. She has not decided to test out her shitting abilities either, opting instead for the burial method in the litter box. I’m not complaining. She can pee in the toilet, and she learned purely from observing humans. That’s some good shit right there.

I’m sure you don’t believe me, so here you go. Video evidence. Watch it, watch it again, and then go tell your dog I said to suck it.