I Am Racist Against Dogs

First, let me tell you about Freya. Freya was a Golden Retriever who came into our family when I was a teenager, and she was a sweetie, as all Goldens are. Friendly and well-behaved, she instantly and effortlessly became a Gross. Throughout her entire life, there was nothing she loved more than having her paw held. In eleventh grade, my sister, Nell, wrote a poem about Freya (titled “Cutesy Wootsy”), which described her “Golden knots of feather hair” and her love of rolling in dirt and eating squirrels that had been killed by our cats. An excerpt:

Freya was just one of many dogs I’ve loved or liked in my days, and even though she smelled bad sometimes, I still miss her.

I tell you this because I also need to tell you: While there are many individual dogs I do like (including probably yours!), in general I do not like dogs. No, that’s not correct—it’s not that I don’t like them. It’s that I disapprove of dogs. As a class with common characteristics, they bother the hell out of me. I’m like an old-time racist, prejudiced against the group while maintaining warm friendships with members of that group¹.

I disapprove of dogs for, oh, about a million reasons—all of which boil down to one reason, really. They’re so damn needy. That pack mentality means they crave constant companionship, constant leadership, so they’re always vying for your attention. Little ones wind up underfoot, bigger ones block your path. They’re in the way because they instinctually need to be in the way. I have enough things in my way already, thank you very much.

Dog apologists don’t just defend this behavior—they love it. This innate sense of loyalty is part of what makes a dog a dog. Man’s best friend is his best friend because of this faithfulness—he will always be there for you, it’s in his DNA. (Dogs: the Rick Astleys of the animal kingdom.) The stock dog name Fido speaks to this: It actually means faithful (okay, technically “I trust”), and it was popularized by, of all people, Abraham Lincoln. So yeah, maybe dogs are needy by nature, but that’s the whole point—they’re attaching themselves to you for the benefit of all.

Thing is, I have a hard time respecting loyalty, a quality that is often mistaken for a virtue. Loyalty sounds good, I know: You are loyal to someone, they to you, and you stand by each other through thick and thin. Loyalty feels hyper-American—loyal to the flag, to the Constitution, to a president. (The incoming guy seems somewhat fixated on loyalty.) To be regarded as disloyal, let alone to proclaim yourself as having no loyalties, marks you as untrustworthy, unknowable, dangerous. Loyalty honestly sounds fucking great.

Except that loyalty is a weapon, wielded by the powerful against the masses. Those with money or status or office (or all of the above) want your loyalty—they need it, they require it. Loyalty is how they gain power, and how they maintain it. They want people whose devotion to them surpasses all self-interest, so that they can be used as necessary, however the powerful want. They demand loyalty tests to prove you’ll do anything, loyalty oaths to keep you committed. The loyal gather, and peer pressure takes hold. The alpha has a pack.

In theory, loyalty is supposed to go both ways—the powerful owe their loyalty to their supporters. But this is precisely what you should distrust. Loyalty only ever flows up. No company is truly loyal to its employees, no politician to their supporters. There may seem to be loyal leaders—a boss who sticks up for the staff, a representative who bestows jobs on constituents—but those are aberrations, and ephemeral. As an institution, power is only ever self-interested, and will discard without hesitation loyalists who fail it, often because, in the diligent practice of their jobs, they come to appear disloyal. The only reward you should expect: heartbreak and a pink slip.

The worst are those who witness the disposal of their peers and remain loyal nonetheless, cheerfully committed to their companies or their leaders despite the evidence that they, too, mean nothing. A few may benefit from long-term loyalty, but those are the statistical errors, not the norm. What the powerful want are those blinded by adulation, the trusting slobberers, the willingly leashed. They want dogs.

Like I said, I find it hard to respect creatures so instinctively subservient. Give me instead the cat. One’s relationship with a cat may be equally cutesy-wootsy: Lots of petting and purring, lots of silly games with dangling strings or laser pointers. But cats are by nature transactional, not loyal. They live with you for the warm sunbeam through the window, for the regularity with which you crack open a can of Fancy Feast. You like petting them, and they like being petted—until, maybe suddenly, they don’t and scamper off. You’re fulfilling each other’s needs, nothing more, nothing less. And if you fail at that? They’ll seek out something better. They’re independent. They can take care of their own shit (literally) without whining to get you involved.

One of the cats we had alongside Freya—a persnickety sort named Nicky—used to disappear from our house for weeks at a time. We’d get worried about her, figure she’d met her end on some highway, but then she’d turn up again—until, months later, she’d vanish once more. One day, my mom spotted her at the other end of the neighborhood: She’d apparently moved in with another family. She was two-timing us!

But I understood. She wasn’t getting what she needed from the Grosses, so she sought it elsewhere. I can respect that.

You would think that in our ostensibly capitalist society, the feline mentality would be prized. It’s all about fair exchange, open markets, self-reliance. It’s predictable and rational. Even the cat-borne parasite toxoplasmosis is reputed to make human beings more prone to risk and more likely to start a business. And yet dogs dominate this country’s psyche, while cat ladies are punchlines, even though they’re as practiced in the art of the trade as any Wall Street broker! Wait, is it possible that American capitalism is not the pure and true system our leaders always claim it to be?

I know I’m screaming into the void here. Most of you love dogs, and as analytical and persuasive as my argument is, you’re not going to switch sides. You’re loyal, that’s your thing, and your pets are indeed, I have to admit, occasionally adorable. But I just want you to know: You’re wrong. Cats rule, dogs drool. Or as Homer Simpson so eloquently put it: