The Backstory: What’s Up With Cats . . and Dogs?

Dogs give us puppy eyes . . cats grace us with their presence. But we love them both . . or at least a lot of us do. But why are the two most popular pets so very different? It all boils down to genetics and history.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right. If you love cats, hate them, or feel
indifferent to them, you've probably asked yourself, what is up
with these guys? You can adore both dogs and cats,
but when it comes to their relationships with humans, they're
really distinct. Here's the thing. Their genetics and their history
with us are very different. There's a reason dogs can't

(00:21):
get enough of us and cats grace us with their presence.
I'm Patty Steele Puppy eyes versus per machines. That's next
on the backstory. The backstory is back. I'm going to
qualify everything you're about to hear by saying I absolutely

(00:41):
love animals. I have two big goofy dogs, Luna and Abby,
and two cats, Rose and Ozzy, my four fuzzballs. They
are definitely a responsibility. But I think they'd probably say
the same thing about me. I had cats years ago,
but more recently just dogs. That was until they met
these two little rescue kittens about a year ago and

(01:02):
could not resist allowing them to adopt me. And that
led to all sorts of questions about how and why
our interactions with cats and dogs are so very different.
Dogs are incredibly needy when it comes to love and attention.
They give you the famous puppy eyes and you just melt. Cats,
on the other hand, enjoy our attention but sort of

(01:24):
feel like if you don't pay attention to me, it
is your loss. There's a line I recently heard about
the two. A dog's best friend is a human. A
cat's best friend is a cat. But why Well, it
all boils down to two things, genetics and history. Dogs
ancestors were pack animals, living and hunting together with a

(01:45):
really strong pack hierarchy, unlike cats who hunt alone. About
forty thousand years ago, when US humans primarily survived by hunting,
eventually a type of wolf developed that was friendlier and
willing to have out with humans in their camps. That way,
they could scavenge food. Pretty soon, humans began to appreciate

(02:06):
the wolve's ability to protect us as well as hunt
with us. It all boiled down to survival of the
friendliest in those days, and those were the wolves. Humans
began to selectively breed as partners. Today, researchers say dogs
are becoming even friendlier as we breed them for emotional
bonds more than as work partners. Okay, let's take a

(02:28):
look at cat evolution. If you have a puss in
the house, you know that they love to be affectionate
and be cuddled until they don't, and it's their call,
and if you love them, their independence is a part
of the joy. What you may also have noticed is
that kitty cats don't have a corresponding feature like puppy eyes.
They look at you and just maybe they'll half close

(02:50):
their eyes, which we all interpret as love. Yes, they purr,
but that's actually more for themselves than for us. It's
triggered by a lot of things, happiness of course, but
also the desire to soothe themselves. But they don't have
the facial muscles that dogs have to actually connect with
us on that level. So why don't we get those

(03:11):
kitten eyes? Again, It's history, you see. Cats have only
been domesticated for at most ten to twelve thousand years.
That's a quarter of the time the dogs have palled
around with us and gained those facial muscles that even
wolves don't have. Cat's domestication began when the first agricultural
societies began to develop. You see, when humans were mostly hunters,

(03:33):
dogs were perfect companions, but cats only became useful when
we started to grow things and more importantly, store the
things we grew. Storing things like grain attracted a whole
lot of mice, snakes, and rats. So when wild cats
saw big container filled with their favorite prey, they were delighted,

(03:54):
and humans were thrilled at the built in pest control.
So cats became necessary first, and eventually a number of humans,
particularly in certain Middle Eastern societies and in China, became
fascinated with them. Just about twenty years ago, archaeologists digging
in Cyprus at a ten thousand year old burial site

(04:14):
found the remains of a cat that had been deliberately
buried with a human. That made it clear for the
first time that these ancient cats were not only domesticated,
but very much appreciated. Later on, in Egypt, cats were
treated like gods. Researchers found a cat's cemetery that holds
three hundred thousand cat mummies. On top of that, if

(04:35):
you were convicted of killing a cat in ancient Egypt,
you could be put to death, even if the death
was accidental. Cats protected the Egyptian home from mice, rats, snakes,
and even scorpions. In fact, when a family cat died,
the family members the humans would frequently shave their eyebrows,
as they did for human family members. The morning period

(04:58):
was over when the eyebrows go grew back in now
there was a time in Europe during the Middle Ages
the cats were actually killed because they were considered to
be in league with the devil or witches. Amazingly, scientists
now think the mass killing of cats ironically helped to
spread the Black plague in the thirteen hundreds, which was
carried by rats. It killed up to sixty percent of

(05:21):
the population of Europe. But that prejudiced against cats only
really lasted until the sixteen hundreds or so. They weren't
all considered evil. In fact, the Chief Mouser is the
official resident cat at the home of the Prime Minister
of the United Kingdom, a role that has lasted four
hundreds of years. The current Chief mouser is Larry, who's

(05:42):
been on the job since twenty eleven through at least
five prime ministers. Now the role of cats more recently
has been much more about the purrs and the interesting
way they have of showing affection to us. In the US,
cats are the most popular household pet, with ninety million
of them in around thirty four percent of homes. Cats
are beloved by celebrities like Taylor Swift, Ricky Gervais, and

(06:05):
John Lennon and have been muses to feline worshippers like
Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, Nicola Tesla, and Abe Lincoln,
whose wife Mary Todd, when asked what her husband's hobby was,
said his only hobby is kats. I hope you like
the Backstory with Patty Steele. Please leave a review. I'd

(06:26):
love it if you would subscribe or follow for free
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dm me if you have a story you'd like me
to cover. On Facebook, It's Patty Steele and on Instagram
Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstory is a
production of iHeartMedia, Premier Networks, the Elvis Durant Group, and

(06:50):
Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our writer
Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday.
Feel free to reach out to me with comments and
even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and
on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the
Backstory with Patty Steele. The pieces of history you didn't

(07:11):
know you needed to know.