[CAT] On cat-based communities
Dec. 13th, 2011 11:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldBefore I read the post at Joe. My. God., my only real-world association for the term "cat park" was with Jungle Cat World, a private zoo specializing in exotic cats located less than an hour's drive east of Toronto in southern Ontario that I learned about through a recent blogTO profile (and yes, I want to go there). Joe reported that a public-space group in Vancouver wanted to create Canada's first off-leash cat park. Joe was unimpressed with the idea.
Cats, as commenters went on to note, are not social animals in the way that dogs are and would not react well to being forced to share territory with other cats. To say nothing of the trauma of getting the cats there: leashed cats are one thing, even a plausible thing, but non-leashed cats would have to be taken in carriers. Shakespeare's own decidedly unhappy reaction to his own Box of Fear isn't uncommon.
I realized that the whole thing was a joke when I Googled and found that the news was an item from the item from the CBC Radio 1 program This is That, a Saturday show whose writers and performers engage with absurdities with such perfectly straight faces that they have their pick of horrified listener reactions to play on their show's feedback segment. (Me, I was fond of the segment where they interviewed a Statistics Canada employee who revealed that the bureau made up statistics, but only the unimportant ones.)
So: not an examination of a new issue, this was, but rather an exploration of an absurdity, namely, that cats are pets which behave in the same ways as dogs. Cats are more private creatures than dogs; cat ownership doesn't produce nearly as integrated a community of pet owners as dog ownership does. Dog owners go with their dogs to dog parks; cat owners share cute cat videos and Lolcatz images over the Internet.
Pure pop sociology theory? Or is something real about? I wonder.
Cats can climb trees and dogs can't. Good luck getting Fluffy down when your lunch hour is over. And many cats can easily leap a fence that would defeat the average hound. So unless this park is treeless and completely screened in, I don't know how it would work. As for my Shelley, she completely freaked out when I tried to introduce her to the great outdoors that is the hallway on our floor. She also can't be around other cats due to her FIV+ status. I suspect that issue alone would kill this idea for the owners of uninfected cats, although there is a somewhat effective vaccine.
Cats, as commenters went on to note, are not social animals in the way that dogs are and would not react well to being forced to share territory with other cats. To say nothing of the trauma of getting the cats there: leashed cats are one thing, even a plausible thing, but non-leashed cats would have to be taken in carriers. Shakespeare's own decidedly unhappy reaction to his own Box of Fear isn't uncommon.
I realized that the whole thing was a joke when I Googled and found that the news was an item from the item from the CBC Radio 1 program This is That, a Saturday show whose writers and performers engage with absurdities with such perfectly straight faces that they have their pick of horrified listener reactions to play on their show's feedback segment. (Me, I was fond of the segment where they interviewed a Statistics Canada employee who revealed that the bureau made up statistics, but only the unimportant ones.)
So: not an examination of a new issue, this was, but rather an exploration of an absurdity, namely, that cats are pets which behave in the same ways as dogs. Cats are more private creatures than dogs; cat ownership doesn't produce nearly as integrated a community of pet owners as dog ownership does. Dog owners go with their dogs to dog parks; cat owners share cute cat videos and Lolcatz images over the Internet.
Pure pop sociology theory? Or is something real about? I wonder.
