When it comes to public image, dogs have it sorted. They are the head boys and head girls of the pet kingdom. They are the ones pulling toddlers from burning buildings, and guiding blind people across streets, and sniffing out landmines in war zones.
You know who you won't find in those starring roles? Cats.
Conventional wisdom has it that cats are almost entirely self-interested. The only way a cat would save a toddler from a burning building is if the infant in question was smeared in tuna.
One does hear the occasional story about a cat dialing emergency services, but it probably thought it was ordering a seafood pizza.
LICKING THEIR CHOPS
In the mainstream narrative about cats - the white monopoly capital version, if you will - they are not just indifferent to humans' well being, but sometimes actively hostile. Die alone with a cat, we are told, and it will take roughly five minutes for Whiskers to start eating your face while purring with delight.
In the same timespan, we are led to believe, heroic Rex would have rounded up a team of paramedics while administering CPR.Listen up, humanoids: we've been sold a pack of lies. A report published in late June in National Geographic says that most cases of "pets scavenging their expired owners' bodies" involved dogs rather than cats.
In one particularly revealing incident, a dead woman's face was eaten clean off by her dog while her two cats did not so much as take an exploratory nibble.
It was also not the case that the dogs were munching on dead humans because they were starved for food. In almost a quarter of surveyed cases, dogs started eating their deceased owners after less than a day - while still having access to their normal food.And before you suggest it: these were not dogs taking revenge on cruel and brutish owners. "Several reports noted that the owners had good relationships with their dogs," National Geographic states.
The dogs in question were also not restricted to particularly vicious breeds. Golden labradors, beagles - anything you'd find in a toilet paper ad will eat you too.
A media acquaintance told me that he once accompanied police called out to investigate a strange smell from a backyard dwelling. They discovered a dead man, headless - and a few feet away, wearing a guilty expression, two tiny mutts licking their chops.
INTERESTS OF JUSTICE
It also turns out that dogs' appetite for their owners is not some perverse rich-world phenomenon. Just a few days after I read the seismic National Geographic report, South African newspaper Rapport published a horrifyingly relevant story about a local man who died of a heart attack and promptly had his penis bitten off by his adoring canine companion.
I recognise that this news is disturbing, but I bring it to your attention in the interests of justice. For too long cats have unfairly been smeared by what has all the hallmarks of a sophisticated Bell Pottinger-type canine PR campaign. It is quite clear to me now that the saying "A dog is man's best friend" was probably written by a dog.
Man's best friend? More like man's worst end...