No Dogs Please, We’re Cat People
I had the pleasure of unexpectedly dog-sitting with my girlfriend this week. Consider this post to be an extended apology to the dog in question.
There’s a conflicting dichotomy at work here. Regard the following:
- I have always been a die-hard cat lover. I realise the odds are good that this bias is due to a brain-dwelling parasite that makes me feel an affinity towards cats that I might not have without the parasite1, but I’m cool with that. Dogs are pets that I’ve always associated as being “other people’s pets”, like what friends and family would own. My family has always had cats2 and dogs have never really been around my life much. I’ve never really liked the way they would try and mount/eat/hump you the minute you walk through the door. What I look for in a pet is a mutual apathy – a deep, burning indifference, if you will. I like having my own space, and cats tend to appreciate that as they don’t like you invading theirs either.
- The dog we looked after was the exemplar of a pooch. It didn’t bark, it was always cheerful, it rarely growled and tried to keep us company as much as possible. You could not ask for a better dog to look after. If there were awards for most dogged doggy companion, this dog would take home all the blue ribbons.
Putting both of these concepts together, I’ll summarise: the dog wanted to be man’s best friend, but I didn’t want one.
For the purposes of this apology, I’ll name the dog “Gremlin” as that’s semantically close to what his real name is3. Gremlin is a friendly little shih tzu (pronounced “shit zoo”, it’s one of those dog breeds that looks like Dougal from The Magic Roundabout) and all week he’s been himself – playful, loyal, full of energy. Curiously, I became an arrogant little bitch just by his presence and only realised midweek that all the problems I had with the dog were, at most, minor inconveniences and not the world-shattering issues I blew them up to be inside my head.
If this was a post breaking up with someone, this is the point where I’d put “it’s not you, Gremlin. It’s me”.
Meet the Dog
It was a Sunday morning when we got the call asking if we could look after Gremlin for the week. There weren’t any genuine reasons to say “no”, but being an overgrown man-child I instantly had panicked visions of coming home from work and finding my glass cabinets open, their contents strewn across the floor in shreds of chewed plastic and fabric. This was based on assumptions that the dog…
- …could be able to open the magnetically-locked cabinets. This would be quite a feat since he’s as tall as my feet and doesn’t have opposable thumbs (or hands, for that matter).
- …would recognise the cabinets as things he could open and not part of the wall.
- …that the dog would, for some reason, take any interest in the toys of men(children).
I also had visions of poop and urine everywhere and of cables, shoes and furniture being scratched and chewed. All of this was unfounded. I had confused the mere common house dog with the lesser-seen Nordic barbarian. In fact, this was animalism4 on my part – I’d just assumed that the housebroken dog would be an unruly little sod. Sorry, Gremlin.
The first actual “issue” was the smell. It was a wet day when we first had him, and our house regularly smells of damp as it is – now it smelt of damp dog. It’s quite overpowering and difficult to describe, but I’d already gone on an internal sulk as taking the smell as a personal affront to my senses. “Oh great,” I thought, “we’ll have to open all the windows and doors next Sunday and vacuum/clean everything just to get rid of the smell”. Never mind that the place was getting to be a dump and required that anyway, it was the dog’s fault I would have to clean.
The second issue was the inherent slobberiness of Gremlin. Although he’s a clean dog, his mouth area tends to drool a lot due to the truncated snout of his species. I don’t really consider dogs to be clean animals anyway, but I have a thing about keeping my hands clean – every time I stroked the dog in reassurance, I’d have to go and wash my hands with soap. What I’m trying to say is that I was blaming the dog for my OCD tendencies. Gremlin didn’t help with this much though, the third issue was his slobber – he has plenty to spare, and loves to share!
As Good as it Gets
There’s a film starring Jack Nicholson called “As Good as It Gets” – I can’t recommend seeing it as it truly is one of the most boring films I have ever seen5. Jack Nicholson plays a reclusive author who suffers from Hollywood OCD (i.e. he washes his hands using a fresh bar of soap each time and has to do this every time he touches something) who ends up looking after his neighbour’s dog while the neighbour is in hospital. Like every Hollywood film, the hardened misanthrope grows to be fond of the pooch. There’s an adorable scene where the neighbour returns and explains that the dog doesn’t like him any more, Jack Nicholson lies that it’s because he keeps bacon in his pocket, but when the dog is given the choice it walks straight up to Jack rather than its owner. It’s implied that the dog has grown to like being treated “as a person” by Nicholson, rather than as a pampered pet by its owner.
All week, I kept saying “this is not As Good as It Gets”. As much as the dog wanted to be my friend, I wasn’t having any of it.
Gremlin would lick me when I got out of the shower, I’d get annoyed as my OCD would immediately flare up. Gremlin would climb on me, I’d get annoyed that my uniform trousers needed to last the week and he wasn’t helping. Gremlin would constantly follow me around, which would annoy me because I just don’t like things following me in my personal space. He’d fall asleep behind my chair, I’d forget and roll a chair wheel over his tail, and then get annoyed when he rightfully growled in response.
To make things worse, about midweek I realised that I was initialising a vicious circle. I’d get annoyed by the dog’s presence, he’d pick up on it and try to be friendly to me. In trying to be more friendly, he’d annoy me more. The dog would detect it and try to be even friendlier.
Doggie Nights
One evening I suddenly developed a runny nose, sore and chesty cough, and immediately came to the conclusion that I must be allergic to dogs. Going to bed early to try and sleep it off, Gremlin loyally followed me up and sat next to the bed (yes, I internalised that as an annoyance too). It turns out it was probably just a brief cold as I’d been pretty tired the previous two days, and I was fingering the blame on the dog6.
The following evening was an early night too, insofar that I had a nap for a couple of hours and then got up for a bit before going back to bed. This was unfortunately the night Gremlin decided to sleep right next to the bed and snore loudly, and I was having enough trouble sleeping without him filling the air with a noise not unlike that of a lumber mill. Rolling him over with my foot only caused the snoring to get louder. Frustrated, I exiled myself to the lean-back chair downstairs. I was just getting comfortable when I remembered that Sammy had seen a massive spider run under the chair and hadn’t seen it since. I swear it was just my brain playing tricks, but as I was nodding off I had the sensation of something running across my arm7. You will believe a fat man can fly – I ejected myself sideways out of the chair at Mach 5 and almost crushed one of our small coffee tables.
Knackered, I slunk back to bed and passed out once Gremlin rolled over and stopped snoring.
Dog vs. Cat Lover
Having lived with a dog for a week, I can safely say that any passing fantasies I’ve had about having a small dog have been crushed under the boot-heel of my own obnoxiousness – they’re just too friendly! It’s not a natural reaction to, upon seeing two old ladies walking their small dogs, immediately want to punt said dogs in the face into traffic, if only for a brief, fleeting impulse. I don’t honestly want to harm dogs at all, but they put me in a mindset where you get the kind of passing thoughts that Jim Carrey used to talk about:
I can only apologise, Gremlin. You’re a lovely little dog, and I’m an arsehole. And never the two shall meet. If ever you become a cat, hit me up and we’ll hang out in the same room and ignore each other for a bit.
- I’d like to point out that I don’t tend to casually handle cat poop, in fact I actively try to avoid it as much as possible. ↩
- Actually, they had a dog once, but it tried to eat Dad for going near me while I was a wee tot. Unfortunately, Chancer had to be put down. It was something in the breed that makes them get super-protective over people, apparently. ↩
- I’m not sure why I’m trying to protect the dog by using a pseudonym. I guess I don’t want it sending me angry letters? Or dog poop on my front doorstep? ↩
- Like racism, but more animally (that’s definitely a word). ↩
- As Good as It Gets apparently won a shedload of awards, which just goes to show that some people will sit through anything. ↩
- As a sort of postscript, I developed conjunctivitis on the last day we had him too – sore, runny eyes. Following discussion with the parents, it turns out that I used to get conjunctivitis whenever we visited an uncle who had a dog for any extended period of time. It transpires that I’m not horribly allergic to dogs, but my eyes are. ↩
- If you want to know how my brain pictures spiders running across my arm, click this link. Warning: not for the faint of heart or deeply arachnophobic. ↩
Post by Sean Patrick Payne+ | October 20, 2013 at 3:14 pm | Real Life | No comment
Tags: As Good as it Gets, cats, dogs, dogs vs. cats, Jack Nicholson, Jim Carrey