Dog v. Cat News; Man v. Woman Internal Planning Issues

I love the snoopy so much. Yesterday we got rid of all his midwestern tags in preparation for his new PacNw lifestyle. I think I licensed him online, for free, which seems weird and now I’m wondering who I actually sent that form to…also wondering how on earth you remember to get a new rabies shot in October of 2013! How do people deal with it when it’s human children and there are even more shots/things to think about? Now I see why every six months all through college my mother would abruptly call and instruct me to go get my teeth cleaned. Her internal calendar is fucking DIALED. I bet for the rest of their lives, mothers wake up in the night thinking about teeth cleanings, measles boosters, tetanus, blood types, optometrist appointments, car insurance, parking tickets, AAA membership, getting tires rotated, etc. etc. all the shit you have to force your kid to take care of for like 30 years until the kid finally one day becomes a legitimate grownup.

I honestly think this is why older women tend to have weirder/worse memories than older men, at least in my experience. They don’t have as much space in there! There’s not enough RAM leftover or whatever, from all those years of telling like four different people what to do constantly! Because the people WON’T DO IT IF YOU DON’T TELL THEM. They honestly won’t! It will be like that episode of the Simpsons when Marge is gone for a week and the house basically crumbles into ruins and there are feral cats living inside it. All the moms I know are getting sort of sweetly addled, really into New Age stuff, intensely forgetful but not in a demented way. But it’s like, they’ve had so much information catalogued in their brains for so many decades! It takes time to sift through that kind of archive, to find the answer to a question like “what is the name of the movie I literally just watched one minute ago.”

My parents weren’t even that traditionally gendered (my mom was often the sole breadwinner while my dad stayed home and made weird experimental things in the kitchen and then got his feelings hurt if we didn’t like the things (crab cakes!), etc.) but still in terms of the brute amount of Information About Things That Need To Get Done On A Daily Basis there is no contest–my mom is the one with that information, whatever it is. My mom’s mind constantly races, planning the day, the week, the month. So-and-so is coming over for dinner so that means on the way home from yoga I have to go by the store to get almonds because we ran out of almonds last thursday when I used them on that oatmeal. This also means I need to remember to bring the canvas shopping bag to yoga with me, which also means I need to go get the canvas shopping bag out of the car from where I left it on tuesday when I used the car to get new pillowcases because Bob and Jan are coming this weekend and that reminds me I need to clean the guestroom and put new towels in the bathroom and that also reminds me Jan is lactose intolerant and I need to get the brown rice for that thing I was going to make for dinner which reminds me I loaned my rice pot to Alex and I need to get it back, and he lives on the way to yoga but in the opposite direction from the store so I need to leave here for yoga 15 minutes earlier than usual so I can get my rice pot on the way to yoga.

etc. etc.

I really hate gender essentialism, and I do not think this is a biological trait but rather a cultural one, because someone has to be in charge of this stuff and because of the way our society is set up it generally falls to the lady of the house. I’m basing my impression of this brain difference only on my mother and myself, too, so that’s probably not a great sample size for my study. But in my experience boys just don’t think this way, in vast strings of actions and consequences and planning, especially with regard to the household. Gary gets actively irritated with me when I try to bring him into my own vast string of planning. “Are we going out to dinner after the movie?” “WHY???” “Well because if we are going out to dinner I’m gonna put the butter back in the fridge but if we’re coming back here for dinner I’m gonna leave it out so it will be soft, also if we’re going out after the movie I’m gonna need a sweatshirt and if we get drinks I’m going to need my wallet for my ID so I’m going to bring a bag if we’re going to dinner whereas if we’re coming back here for dinner I’m just going to put my keys in my pocket and not bring a bag.” Then Gary looks at me like he hates my guts. He wants things to be spontaneous, but let me tell you, if you come back to make dinner and the butter’s all hard, you’re not gonna be happy, that’s for sure!!!!! LOL

But if you don’t plan, then you end up bumbling around and wishing you had planned better!!! If it’s like, we might go on a hike when we go visit so-and-so, I should bring sunscreen. But if the other person is like “I HATE HOW YOU HAVE TO PLAN EVERYTHING ARRRRGH” and so you don’t bring sunscreen, then you do go on the hike and get fucking sunburned. Is that what you want!??!??

Anyway, this stresses me out because I can already feel my memory going. I was once famed far and wide for my memory (not literally)! and now I can’t remember who I was talking to yesterday when I learned about how to cook fennel. So now I try so hard not to mother anybody. I don’t even want to be a real mother! I shouldn’t mother my husband or anybody else but myself and my snoopy. Did you read that Badinter article in the new New Yorker? Jesus Christ, right??? It is a hard road for women in this world, LITERALLY NO MATTER WHAT CHOICE(S) YOU MAKE.

Also this could just be a thing with me and in my family…maybe this is not one of those grandiose “men be like this/women be like this” bullshit statements that usually make me so mad. Maybe me and my mom are just crazy, I don’t know. Has this been your experience of gender-based-internal-planning as well or am I just a maniac?!??? TELL ME

Which brings me back to my point, which is that I love the snoopy so much. I ordered him a fancy new ID tag with a rainbow on it and his name and my phone number. I’ve been really noticing the differences between dogs and cats lately–not the actual differences between the animals themselves, but the difference in owning one vs. the other. I always thought I was equally a cat- and dog-person, loving and enjoying and appreciating them both equally. But now all of a sudden I realize I am feeling pretty distant from cats. I mean don’t get me wrong, I love a good cat. I think cats are funny, and it’s nice to have a warm one sitting on your lap. I truly enjoy a cat. But there is just so much communication, so much back-and-forth, with a dog…it’s hard to even remember what living with a cat is like. Cats require so little of you, which is one of their strong points as a pet, and I get that. It’s awesome to have a warm snuggly friend you don’t actually have to spend that much time wrangling, educating, walking, etc. I totally get that. But now when we go to feed Richard’s cats I just look at them and feel like they aren’t really seeing me, and I’m not really seeing them. You just spend so much time TALKING to a dog, and the thing is that the dog LISTENS, and comes to actually understand a lot of what you say, in a really weird and subtle way. He knows so many words, but also he knows body language and gesture and tone. He’s watching you constantly, picking up the smallest signals. He wants to please you and do a good job–he wants to HAVE A JOB, it’s important to him, whether it’s herding sheep or guarding the house or even just fetching the ball, he wants to have a task he does for you that he can excel at. It even soothes him just to do a lot of “sit” and “stay” and to have rules about how to go out the door. It’s a major part of having a happy dog, and isn’t that bizarre? The discipline and structure and service that make a dog happy are completely foreign to the world of cats. Which is also a thing cat-lovers love about cats, which I also totally get.

It just can’t be compared–the two types of pet ownership are completely different and they should not be compared and it’s weird that we all do compare them. Having a dog is like having a way-less-intense CHILD. The vigilance. I am realizing I totally do that mom-thing when I’m outside with him talking to someone. Constantly checking on him, keeping an eye on him, making sure he doesn’t run into the street. Interrupting conversations because I need to explain to my dog that a behavior he’s doing is not okay. Or IS okay! Taking time to make sure to praise him appropriately when he gets it right! Teaching him how to stay calm around squirrels. Introducing him to new things and letting him learn them. It’s like being a fucking nanny again, complete with the plastic bags full of shit.

There is a constant stream of communication occurring between you, and especially when they’re young you can’t ever let something slide or let your guard down. You have to take every “teachable moment” and TEACH the dog. And you worry about things, his behavior, his health, his state of mind. Lately he’s been barking when people come in the door–we think it’s a combo of being stressed out by packing but also being somewhat on edge from the drunk kid who scared him so much the other night–and I CAN NOT stop thinking about it. Tactics to take, ways to teach him about when he’s allowed to be on duty vs. off duty, ways to impress upon him that when we open the door and invite someone into our home that means he is OFF DUTY and is NOT ALLOWED TO BARK. etc. I woke up this morning and in my google bar was the phrase “my dog’s poop is too soft,” which I forgot I had googled. Just constantly thinking about him and working with him. And the satisfaction of watching him get better, smarter, more in control of himself, is amazing. Seeing him actually learn the things we try to teach him! It’s so great. It’s INTERESTING. It is a thing that engages my MIND in a way a cat never has, really. And that’s not better or worse, it’s just different, and I think if you’ve never loved a dog you maybe just don’t get why all the wrangling and hassle and limits on your life and yelling the same word over and over again is actually interesting and exciting and makes you feel close to the creature.

(it sounds like I am fucking describing having children, and I apologize for that)

One thing I don’t understand is why this happened. Humans domesticated both dogs and cats, thousands of years ago, so why are dogs so much more symbiotically in tune with humanity than cats? Is it because dogs were domesticated so much longer ago? Weren’t cats domesticated by the Egyptians? Which is only like, what, 6,000 years ago? Whereas dogs are more like 12,000, or even earlier. Does that make a difference? Or does it have to do with the reasons for the domestication? Dogs were domesticated to help hunt, to protect, to guard….what were cats domesticated for? And why not for hunting and protection? Lions are fucking fierce.

anyway, not meaning to start a cat v. dog battle, because honestly I love a cat. I would like to have cats in my life. I fucking loved Bird so much you guys, I still think about him. It’s just the differences are very very weird and I don’t think I really understood them until actually getting a dog. It now makes sense to me that cat-people are super grossed-out and alienated by dogs. Because they aren’t comparable, and it’s annoying to have them compared! they are just wholly different experiences from start to finish!!! And if you are someone who likes a cat and everything the cat means for your life, then it makes total sense to me that you would explicitly NOT like dogs, because dogs are everything cats aren’t, and vice versa.