Darwin
Friends of Darwin
MisfitBloggers

Categories

He loves and she loves

Just Causes


  • Support_denmark

  • Marykay_1

Password required

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

« How can we ignore the cats next door? | Main | We need to stay in their face »

August 01, 2009

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Studying cats is an aid to understanding humans.

A love for the ages!

Would you please get a darn dog or two, Sissy?
Sheesh.

Bird Dog: Wretched cur!

Perhaps Tiny and Earl Grey are simply enjoying each other and the season in the spirit of Henry James: "Summer afternoon -- summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language."

I have lectured Bird Dog before that his preference for dogs over cats springs from the following:

(The dog) "is often spoken of...as the friend of man, and his intelligence and fidelity are praised. The meaning of this is that the dog is man's servant and that he has the gift of an unquestioning subservience and a slave's quickness in guessing his master's mood. Coupled with these traits, which fit him well for the relation of status--and which must for the present purpose be set down as serviceable traits--the dog has some characteristics which are of a more equivocal aesthetic value. He is the filthiest of the domestic animals in his person and the nastiest in his habits. For this he makes up with a servile, fawning attitude towards his master, and a readiness to inflict damage and discomfort on all else. The dog, then, commends himself to our favor by affording play to our propensity for mastery, and as he is also an item of expense, and commonly serves no industrial purpose, he holds a well-assured place in men's regard as a thing of good repute. The dog is at the same time associated in our imagination with the chase--a meritorious employment and an expression of the honorable predatory impulse. Standing on this vantage ground, whatever beauty of form and motion and whatever commendable mental traits he may possess are conventionally acknowledge and magnified...(part of their value lies as) items of conspicuous consumption..."

Thorstein Veblen "The Theory of the Leisure Class" pp 78-79)

I personally love dogs, but I also love cats. It's a both and. Each magnificent in their own way.

Something wonderful, indeed. This post left me humming happily.

The comments to this entry are closed.

The Cold Turkey Cookbook

Look to the animals

  • looktotheanimals

Kudos

Blog powered by Typepad