Friday cat-blogging

Over the last several years, I've been noticing a dramatic increase in the numbers of feral cats in the part of the country in which I live. I have long assumed that there is also a growing population of wild dogs living in the forested parts of the United States as well, dogs that we don't see because they have come to avoid human contact entirely. Turns out I was wrong.

While domesticated cats can sometimes do a reasonably good job of surviving on their own, catching mice and birds and bugs and the occasional garbage can, their lives are usually brief and violent. Dogs, though, are a different matter entirely, one might say "a different breed of cat."

Turns out that the occasional dog that you see who is homeless is probably not going to survive much longer from the time you see him. Domesticated dogs are not hunters, and the few wild dogs that you see still survive on the benificence of humans. Wild dogs scavenge on the outskirts of human habitation, eating out of garbage cans, pet food bowls, dumpsters, wherever they can find the cast-off scraps of humanity. They don't live long. Dogs are basically not smart enough and adaptable enough to make it without humans, something that cats seem to handle just fine.


Once again, the evidence says that cats are smarter.