Cat people

That guy next door with the big golden retriever is friendly and gregarious. The woman across the street with the three Siamese cats is obsessive, anxious and secretive. Those are the stereotypes. Any basis in fact?

The answer is "yes," according to a University of Texas professor of psychology. Sam Gosling has published a study showing personality differences between "dog people" and "cat people."

According to his findings:

• Forty-six percent of respondents described themselves as dog people, while 12 percent said they were cat people. Almost 28 percent said they were both and 15 percent said they were neither.
  
• Dog people were generally about 15 percent more extraverted, 13 percent more agreeable and 11 percent more conscientious than cat people.
  
• Cat people were generally about 12 percent more neurotic and 11 percent more open than dog people.¹

According to the study, people who say they like both dogs and cats are essentially dog people, for the most part, with some neurotic traits.

This study tells me all I need to know about both popular psychology and the University of Texas. (I assert, neurotically.)

As I've mentioned, I prefer cats, and I live with cats. I also like dogs. I suspect that I actually relate to dogs with greater empathy than do their own masters, who themselves are too busy running around being extroverted and agreeable and wagging their own tails to have developed any real understanding of the emotional needs of their adoring pets.

I maintain -- and do stop me if I've told you this before -- that dog people like dogs primarily because they can dominate them. Even if a guy spends all day at work staring at a computer screen and saying "yes sir" meekly to his boss, he can come home and be the alpha male in his dog's small pack. He can yell at the dog; he can put the dog on a leash and drag him around. His dog is also appealing, I suspect, because of a faux parent-child dynamic. The dog, he fantasizes, is that unusual child who is loving and unquestioning and obedient, and -- above all -- respectful.

Cats are esthetically pleasing, of course. They're graceful. They're clean. More important, their personalities are everything that a dog's is not. Your cat relates to you as an equal. He will, of course, gladly accept your food and your bed, but only rarely your rapturous hugs. He offers you his friendship only when a certain level of mutual trust has been attained. When you come home from work, don't expect your cat to rush up and grovel with joy at your arrival, any more than he would expect you to pounce on him with abandon as he enters the cat door.

A cat is an adult, and he honors you by presuming the same of you.

What a cat will do, with half-open eyes, is study you all evening while you're reading or computing, and then, when the proper moment arrives, steal up next to you and brush his tail against your leg. He will sit on your lap, when he so chooses, and reach around the book you're reading to brush his paw against your face. He will observe the signals, and silently move upstairs ahead of you as he sees you prepare for bed. A cat's affection is more moving than a dog's, because it's based not on some genetically programmed urge to submit to the rule of the leader, but on a gradually developed sense of affection and trust, arising out of his experience with you and yours with him.

Dogs are fun. They're great company, and obviously are far better designed than cats for going out for a romp in the countryside. But friendship with a cat is an accomplishment, an achievement that pays emotional rewards for years, for the rest of the cat's life -- a life that is fortunately longer than that of a dog.

And if all this proves me neurotic, well, I can live with that.

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¹University of Texas at Austin News (Jan. 13, 2010) The article has drawn a large number of on-line comments, almost all negative, including a claim that the published paper is an embarrassment to the University of Texas. The comments are far more entertaining (and intelligent) than the the article itself. (Almost half the comments concern the spelling of "extraversion." The word is properly spelled with either an "a" or an" o.")

Photo above: Loki, age 5