Argumentative Essay:Dogs vs Cats

Pets bring happiness to a person’s life. They create a special bond with their owners. This bond can help an owner and his pet live in harmony. People usually get pets to have a companion in their homes. Couples get pets before having a child because taking care of a pet is similar in taking care of a child. Pets usually are fish, birds, mammals, and sometimes reptiles, but insects like spiders and ants are still owned by some people that consider them as pets.

Dogs and cats are one of the most popular pets to have. Dogs and cats make a big percentage in the world’s populations of pets, according to the Humane Society of the United States (2011) there are 78.2 million owned dog and 86.4 million owned cats. Dogs show that they are loyal to an owner and that are easily trained, cats on the other hand can take care of themselves better than dogs and can remove rat infestations from the house of the owner.

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Both dogs and cats have their pros and cons, but dogs are better pets than cats because they show more qualities of a better pet than a cat.

Dogs provide an active lifestyle for an owner. Dogs are very energetic which requires constant walks. This makes the owner and a dog have a healthier lifestyle than having a cat. Have you ever seen a person walk their cat? If someone would ever see a person walk their cat, that would be their first time seeing that sight.

Cats are known as to stay at their home and wait for time to pass by. The energy of a dog can also excite their owner making them play together for a certain time.

Dogs also learn a variety of tricks and can learn them easier than cats. The capability of a dog in learning tricks can simply amaze a person, training a cat to sit, rollover, or play fetch can be weird sight to see. I personally have not seen a cat do the tricks a dog can do. If I ever see one, I do not know what would my reaction would be. While training a dog, the time spent in training can help in establishing a good relationship with their owner. A dog can also provide protection to a home. Dogs can be trained to alert owners when seeing a stranger in their yard or attack on command when the owner says so. Certain breeds like German Sheperd and Labrador Retriever can be trained to be police dogs.

These dogs help in assisting police with their work, providing them help in searching for missing people or objects or in detecting firearms or illegal substances on people. Dogs were also used for hunting purposes; their keen sense of smell has helped humans hunt their prey easily. Dogs can also be trained to guide blind people to destinations. Cats can help out in rat infestations at home but they cannot help in sniffing out people with firearms or guiding people to destinations. Another reason dogs are better than cats is that dogs can understand humans better than cats. Training a dog requires hand gestures, these hand gestures when repeated over and over can be easily understood by a dog that will trigger the action that the owner wanted.

Many people think that dogs show more affection than cats. According to the journal Animal Cognition, University of London, researchers have found that dogs are more likely to approach a crying person than someone who was humming or talking, and that they normally respond to weeping with submissive behaviors. Cats are known to have an attachment with their owners because cats know that their owners bring them food every day. Lastly, dogs provide better companionship with their owners. Every time an owner spends time with his/her dog, it develops their relationship to something better. Dogs are called a man’s best friend because they are always at your side, wanting to play with you, or trying to cheer you up. The bond between a dog and their owner is similar to a parent and a child.

A child knows when their parent is around or not. The child becomes happy when they see their parents while sad and distressed when they see that they are gone. Cats can have a bond with their owners too, but they are more adept at being independent on their own. Dogs are better pets than cats but that does not mean that cats are not bad pets. Cats also have their positive sides like, independency. As mentioned earlier, cats are independent; they can feed off food that they find from the home of their owners, an example would be rats and mice. Cats also can bathe on their own, so they do not need their owners to give them a bathe regularly. The dependency of a dog can sometimes frustrate an owner, the feeding it needs regularly, the cleaning of the dog’s dirt, and the bath it needs to keep clean are the factors that can frustrate an owner.

Cats are more silent than dogs. The barking of a dog can irritate an owner and the neighbours. A cat’s “meow” cannot be loud enough to wake people up at midnight. According to Douglas (2004), dogs can vocalize their moods, meaning the loudness of their bark depends on what emotion they have at the moment. Cats on the other hand do not, if they are happy, sad, or excited they will “meow” at the same level but evidence from (McComb et al., 2009) suggests that cats are capable of purring with a frequency that has a subliminal effect similar to that of a human baby's cry. This purr, known as the "solicitation purr," is slightly different from the regular purr and is used to ask for food.

I have never experienced owning a cat, my family has always owned dogs. From stray dog to a breeded one, it has always been dogs. The loyalty shown by the dog, companionship to their owner, the active lifestyle given by the dog, and capability of the dog to learn tricks are the reasons why my family would own a dog than a cat. I have never thought of having a cat, even in the future. The cats of our neighbours have helped me in making that decision. Every time we leave a door open, a cat would manage to go inside, hop on the dining table and get some of the food prepared. Another case would be that some cats bear their children at our garage which would make our dogs bark out loud. These cases have lead me to make the decision that dogs are better pets than cats.

References:
Animal Cognition (May 30,2013), University of London, http://www.livescience.com/20823canine-comfort-dogs-understand-emotion.html Arden Moore (2007), The Cat Behavior Answer Book, http://www.petfinder.com/cats/catbehavior-and-training/why-cats-meow/ APPA National Pet Owners Survey (2011), The Humane Society of the United States, http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/pet_overpopulation/facts/pet_ownership_statistics.html Douglas, K. (9 December 2009)."Dogs vs. Cats: The Great Pet Showdown. New Scientist. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427381.200-dogs-vs-cats-the-great-petshowdown-.html McComb, K., Taylor, A., Wilson, C., & Charlton, B. (2009). "The Cry Embedded Within the Purr." Current Biology, 19(13). Retrieved 17
December 2009 from the Academic Search Premier database.

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Written by Ethan Brown

Updated: Jan 18, 2024

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Updated: Jan 18, 2024