The Dark Truth Behind Cats & Dogs

I'm sure we all have seen "Cats & Dogs" and it's sequel. The first film that started it all was directed by Lawrence Guterman with screenplay by John Requa and Glenn Ficarra, and stars Jeff Goldblum, Elizabeth Perkins and Alexander Pollock. The story centers on the relationships between cats and dogs, depicting the relationship as an intense rivalry in which both sides use organizations and tactics that mirror those used in human espionage. But the thing is, dogs are the heroes while cats are the villains. This has been used so many times, but why do they do this many, many times, and not let dogs become the villains too? That's because they are, but didn't let the humans know that. 
Why? Easy: Dogs See Humans As Gullible, And As Prey. 
The reason cats don't do what dogs do, is because they are smarter than dogs, and it's in their nature. But we don't see it like that sometimes, and see it as a cynical act of bastardized evil. For instance, it's common for a cat to do what it does, without someone having a heart-attack over it, but not with dogs though, for they just give them the 'Welcome Wagon'. 
But the sad truth is: Dogs in Islam, as they are in Rabbinic Judaism, are conventionally thought of as ritually impure. This idea taps into a long tradition that considers even the mere sight of a dog during prayer to have the power to nullify a pious Muslim’s supplications. Similar to many other mistakenly viewed aspects of Islamic history, today both most Muslims and non-Muslims think that Islam and dogs don’t mix.
There is, however, quite a different unknown strand of thinking about dogs in Islam, a long history of positive interactions between Muslims and dogs that goes back to the religion’s very beginnings. According to several authoritative accounts of his life and teachings, Prophet Muhammad himself prayed in the presence of dogs. Many of his cousins and companions, the world’s first Muslims, raised young puppies. In the Mosque of the Prophet in Medina, the second holiest site in the world for Muslims after the Kaaba, dogs were regularly seen frolicking about during the prophet’s life and for centuries after as well.
It’s no surprise that the first Muslims had so many dogs. Most of them kept large flocks of sheep and goats, and dogs helped to manage and protect these other animals, preventing them from running away and scaring off would-be thieves and predators. Sheep and goats were these early Muslims’ food and capital, and dogs helped to protect these investments.
Canines were also crucial companions during hunting expeditions. Long before Islam, dogs were depicted in stone carvings from ancient Egypt and Iraq running alongside their human owners. Muslims continued this use of dogs.
As Islam spread throughout the Middle East and the world, it moved from being a religion of nomadic peoples to one centered in cities. Many of the world’s largest cities in the millennium between 700 and 1700 were Muslim cities. As they did in the countryside, in cities too dogs played vital roles. They of course continued to protect property and shoo away intruders, but in cities dogs served an even more important function—they ate garbage. From Damascus and Baghdad to Cairo and Istanbul, urban authorities supported dog populations as consumers of waste to keep city streets clean. Muslim leaders built watering troughs for dogs, many mosques threw out food for them, and butchers used them to keep away rats and other vermin. Humans who committed violence against urban canines were often punished. Muslim cities were much cleaner and more pleasant places with dogs than without them.
All of this meant that Muslims throughout the world were in regular daily contact with the many dogs in their midst. They recognized how useful canines were as guards and cleaning agents and, we can only presume, developed quite intimate relationships with them built around regular contact and the kind of affection bred from codependence.
Given this history, where then did the idea that Islam is only hostile to dogs come from? The short answer is disease. About two hundred years ago, ideas about contagion began to change. Still very far from what we would today recognize as germ theory, people in the Middle East, Europe, and elsewhere started to notice a correlation between outbreaks of plague, cholera, and malaria and the physical proximity of victims to places like cemeteries, garbage heaps, and swampy lakes. City planners and governments throughout the Middle East therefore started to excise these sources of disease from the increasingly crowded districts in which their people lived. As they collected and then pushed garbage outside city walls, they also unwittingly removed the dogs that ate this trash. Dogs used to keep streets clean. Now humans did.
The historic connections between dogs and trash did not serve the animal well. Not only was there simply less garbage to eat in cities, but the garbage that did remain was now seen as a threat to public hygiene and soon too were its canine consumers. Indeed, in just a few decades in the early nineteenth century, dogs came to be seen as both economically useless and hazardous to public health. The results? Several large-scale dog eradication campaigns, far fewer dogs in Middle Eastern cities, and a change in attitude toward the animal. No longer useful and productive urban residents, dogs were now seen as dangerous, disease-ridden, and expendable.
This relatively recent sea change in Muslim attitudes towards dogs explains the dominant view of the animal today. While of course opinions vary and the elite in many Muslim countries keep dogs as status symbols, the majority of Muslims see dogs as dirty, impure, sometimes even evil. As with so much in the Islamic past today, the history of dogs is thus misunderstood by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Most don’t know and many would likely not be open to the idea that dogs were treasured by the Prophet and millions of Muslims after him.
For those of us—Muslims or otherwise—whose most regular interaction with a living nonhuman animal is with a dog, the story of dogs in Islam offers another lesson as well. Humans did not always keep dogs for affection, love, or cuteness. For most of history, they were not pets. They were laborers, economic necessities, hunters, and street cleaners. Apart from dogs that sniff drugs, aid the blind, or chase criminals, very few of us today experience dogs as anything other than that joy that licks our face in the morning. However, throughout history they’ve been much more. 
Okay, we're done talking about the dogs, now let's talk about the Cats.
While I agree with Donna Fernstrom’s excellent answer which addresses this issue from a biological and psychological standpoint, there are several other reasons for this widespread misconception.
From a cultural standpoint a lot of it has to do with this guy:
Meet Ugolino Di Conti, better known as Pope Gregorius the 9th, but we’ll just call him Greg.
Greg was a 13th century pope, and quite the busy bee. Among his noteworthy deeds were calling for papal supremacy, instituting the first medieval inquisition, calling for a crusade to take back Jerusalem (followed by the suspension and excommunication of emperor Frederick II when the emperor didn’t follow his promise of said crusade on time), but most importantly, issuing the Vox in Rama, the first official church document condemning black cats as incarnations of Satan himself.
We often fear what we cannot understand. Being nocturnal and illusive, highly adaptable and free-willed creatures had enabled cats to overcome many extraordinary circumstances. So extraordinary in fact, that in the eyes of certain primitive humans the cat’s natural gifts had apparently seemed unnatural, or supernatural.
Thus began an era of witch hunting and cat slaughtering. Anyone who seemed funny to some “righteous” believer’s eye was taken, tortured and brutally murdered in one horrible way or another. All in the name of God of course.
Cats continued being associated with ill omens and witchcraft for centuries after ol’ Greg kicked the bucket. Fueled by Ignorance, malice, and divine decree, the casual massacre of Felis Catus had lasted for a long time as a form of tradition and entertainment throughout Europe. Cats of all coat colors were abused and killed, but black cats were persecuted the most. This trend didn't (officially) die off until the early 19th century, some say the black cat population in Europe never fully recovered until this very day.
Some scholars suggest that Greg’s lil’ papal bull (pun intended) was what eventually lead to the outbreak of the Black Plague in Europe (which ironically cats were also initially blamed for). The rapid decrease in cat population quite naturally lead to a rapid increase in rat population, rats which carried fleas that carried the plague.
Of course not all cultures were quite as ailurophobic as 'Home-Skillet' and his devoted followers. The ancient Egyptians, ancient Greeks, the Celts, and the Norse were all quite fond of cats and generally viewed them in positive light. Black cats were and still are considered a good omen in parts of Scotland, the UK, and Japan.
Sadly this isn’t the case everywhere around the world and even in 2018, nearly 800 years after the issuing of Vox in Rama, many still believe that the sighting of a melanistic domestic feline will somehow magically negatively influence their lives.
Black cats have some of the lowest adoption rates and highest euthanasia rates in animal shelters (excluding a temporary increase in demand right before Halloween by an alarming number of highly disturbed individuals looking to “adopt” black cats so they can be used as decorations, sacrifice, or some other form of twisted torture only a human can come up with).
Many people like to think in terms of black and white, good and evil, right and wrong, but life is much more complex than that. Cats, as a species, are not good nor evil, same goes for dogs. Neither animal would understand these human invented concepts, and yet, somehow, both species often seem to be better at understanding us than we are at understanding them.
But what happens to animals that we domesticate? They become controllable and submissive. Often they become dumber than their wild origin as well. Depending on the breed, dogs can be all of those things, which makes sense because dogs are tools that we literally made using artificial breeding. They are exactly what we decided they should be, so of course we see them as innocent and perfect little buddies. 
But why not do the same with cats? Two things: Internet, and television.
These two make a horrible combination when it comes to domesticating our cats, it brainwashes us look at our little buddies the wrong way, and judge them, and label them as quote-on-quote; "Evil Doers". All thanks to good ol' technology. But, technology is one of our problems with our little "Anti-Cat" situation. 
Oh no, it's not just cats that are on the list, dogs can be nasty sons of bitches if they wanted to!
Just look at Son of The Mask where a green-headed CGI dog is trying to murder a baby, a fucking baby for Christ sake! And the dog just laughs like a fucking psychopath! But that's nothing compared to how dogs attack their owners in horror films such as: The Pack (1977), Dogs (1971), Cujo (1983), Devil Dog: The Hound From Hell (1978) and much more.
And if cats were "Scapegoats" of the past, why label them evil, crafty, snarky, grumpy, mischievous, unreliable, or villainous? The answer lies in their nature: Cats are quite anti-social animals in human eyes, preferring to go out and mind their own business. Since cats hunt mice, a much smaller animal, humans' sympathy has always gone to the mouse rather than the cat, despite mice being considered vermin by most people. A cruel game where the hunter teases his victim before finally striking him is called a "cat-and-mouse game" in many languages. The concept is based on the behavior that real cats often display before killing their prey and which is often misunderstood as cruel torture. In reality it's just an instinctive imperative to make sure their prey is weak enough to be killed. Cats are often depicted eating mice, while they also hunt other small creatures. Yet, especially in children's stories, comic strips and cartoons, cats are predominantly portrayed as the sworn rival, threat or enemy of mice. 
Dogs however, are often called "man's best friend". Many stories feature them as heroes who save the day or help their master in dangerous situations. Detectives and police often use them to track criminals. They are also often used as watch dogs and guide dogs. 
But, this begs the question: Why did we make this connection if dogs are as ruthless and monstrous as we see cats? Again, the answer is internet and television. And maybe the reason the villains of the two films: Mr. Tinkles and Kitty Galore, plotted to take over the world, because of bad upbringing. 
Knowing this past not only gives us a fuller picture of the most ubiquitous nonhuman animal we welcome in our midst, but it also helps us to understand how our histories with other animals have shaped our current world. And we hope, this open your eyes.
Category:Theory
Category:Animals
Category:Psychopasta
Category:Movies & TV