This is a good place to start.

SB

  Parent post is awfully close to the truth.

SB

Dogs are much more in tune with human behavior than cats are.

  Dogs are much more *outspoken* about it; doesn't necessarily mean they understand more ;)

  I'll leave the comparisons to human society for the next wag.

SB

  The Internet is made of cats!

    Then there might be some hope for the future...

    As to cats and their toilet habits, it may or may not be a comment on them that they almost universally prefer at least a little privacy when they are performing their ablutions.

    They're almost... human... in that respect; excepting a considerable amount of paranoia, the sort that still has the human race segregating bathrooms according to gender, anyway ;)

    I have a 23 lb furball here who will swat the bathroom door closed if he wants his privacy. He doesn't seem embarassed about it, either. ...

  After reading so many comments tonight, I do have to remark that the "cat doubters" that are so often prevalent when these discussions come up elsewhere, are noticeably absent here... *g*

SB

  Pack animals fighting over the last shards of a bone, more like.

SB

  Much more, probably. Historically cats have been much more in the role of symbiotes, rather than parasites. By that I mean that cat colonies generally take of themselves, while performing the same vermin infestation control, while dogs have needed more overt control, lest they turn feral and prey on the very livestock that humans relied on, or humans themselves.

SB

I think the modern idea that cats have attitude just stems from the prevalence of spoiling of cats by modern families.

  I think that it has more to do with humans being spoiled by social and cultural concepts of superiority, myself.

  It cheers me to think that many of our "domesticated" cats still maintain a level of independence that would put most humans concepts of the same to shame.

  One could hope that after we smash our civilization down to bedrock - which we are working very hard towards doing - that our domestic cats might, in the very distant future, manage to salvage something out of the mess that we made, and benefit from it. Who are we to say? As a species, we haven't even learned how not to shit in our own nest.

  Maybe that's just me wishing for fishes, but as I am often told nowadays, I am more cat than human - and I take that as a compliment.

  Besides, I just love fish... yummy!

SB

  Maybe she's figured it out, but doesn't care. Humans tilt at windmills, too. We have many ancient mythologies built entirely around the concept, come to think of it, carried on by people who display less rationality than your cat does.

  At least your cat isn't trying to push her point of view on the entire damned world at weapon's point.

SB

  For pussy you might put up with a really annoying movie and listen to someone bitch about how all the women at work piss them off ;)

  Or one could go have dinner and intellectual conversation with someone you might actually like to live with longer than 24 hours.

    It's all about motivation ;)

SB

  Too many people assume that the human concepts of motivation are those that every other living thing follow.

  Survival is the only real ultimate motivation. How one does so does not necessarily define one's intelligence, except perhaps in the compromises one is willing to enter in to - and in that respect, cats win paws down over dogs. Freedom of choice is still something that us humans value as well, is it not?

SB

  Cats in Modern America 2010 perform another function - helping keep the human race from making an entirely greedy self-centered arrogant fool of itself.

SB

... so we could replace those co-workers with cats! Hey, at least the cats would raise the moral in the department...

SB

  Your comments in this respect are by far the most intelligent ones I have seen on slashdot on this subject in many years. Thank you. I have observed the same as you, I'm just not quite so eloquent in saying so, I guess...

  I think we're inherently misled by our own experience (and a lot of hubris, as is made obvious by human treatment of other animals in general.)

  I've argued much the same for some time, but few humans listen - we have a societal/cultural bias towards superiority that blinds us to many things.

  I'll add (amplify?) that variations in the individual's intelligence is just as prevalent in cats or dogs as it in human beings, or, for that matter, any mammal, and quite possibly any living creature.

  Very few humans seem to realize just how much their environment determines their behavior... and just how little experiments inside of controlled environments can tell us about the existence or non- of free will.

  agree; degrees of consciousness is closer than "yes" or "no",

  If there were such thing as a "yes/no" point when it comes to consciousness, then the human race would not have the problems with mental handicaps, senility, etc, that it has. Anyone who has spent any time in a hospice with alzheimer's patients knows damned well that the line between consciousness and "irrationality" is a indefinably blurry one, and one that is not limited to what our society/culture considers "handicaps".

  Our society/culture hardly has a good track record in treating it's own "cripples" as living, feeling beings ;(

SB
 

... a sensible solution to weed out corrupt Chicago politicians!

  Coyotes... with rocket launchers mounted on their backs.

  I'd vote for that.

SB

  Because the local animal control was too busy trying to reduce the numbers of feral cats?

SB