Theme
3:57am November 15, 2014

Is it my imagination…

…or do cats handle modern human technology better than dogs do?

Like if a dog is the type to get upset about things they don’t understand, then they’re going to get upset every time they see a DVD player open by remote control.

A cat, on the other hand… there’s a few cats who would stay interested in a DVD player opening and shutting no matter what. But most cats I know would eventually shrug and go “That’s the way the world works these days…” and move on.

I’ve never seen a dog shrug and move on.

Fey is the master of shrugging and moving on. Interesting technology holds her attention for a few seconds, then she figures it out and loses interest. This includes things like recorded bird song and stuff, stuff that would interest her iff it were real, but she rapidly figures out it’s not real and totally and completely acts like it doesn’t exist. Like she’ll look around the speakers for awhile, but when there’s no birds where they “should be” based on the origin of the sounds, it’s like “Meh, WTF, whatever, humans are weird and do weird things.”

And that’s her take on all technology that is new to her: She gets interested or startled or scared at first, then she investigates, then she does the “(shrug) whatever” thing that cats do so well.

I’ve never seen a dog go through that sequence.

I wonder what makes cats better about high tech stuff than dogs overall, though. I mean dogs have been co-evolving with us for longer, you’d think they’d get used to us inventing shit by now. You’d think it’d be “Oh that, that’s just that thing humans do all the time to entertain themselves, never mind that.” But instead we get barking and shaking and running away and stuff, that often does not get better.over time.