I had this theory when I was a kid. A beautiful, simple, and completely wrongheaded piece of biological taxonomy. Dogs were men, and cats were women. That was it. Made perfect sense to my little, pea-sized brain. Dogs were loud, and dumb, and loyal, and they’d fuck anything that moved. Cats were quiet, and clean, and mysterious, and they always seemed to be judging you from a high shelf. Male vs. Female. Obvious, right? I never even considered the possibility of a female dog or a male cat. The world was simpler then.
And the biggest difference, the one that really stuck in my craw, was the shit.
The dogs, Christ. They were beautiful, honest engines of defecation. You’d take them for a walk, and bam, right there on Mrs. Henderson’s prize-winning petunias, a big, steaming monument to their own internal processes. No shame. No planning. Just a simple, honest transaction between gut and ground. You’d go out in the backyard every weekend with a shovel, feeling like a goddamn sanitation engineer in Dante’s Inferno, scooping up these landmines, these beautiful, ugly, and completely unapologetic turds. Dogs just didn’t give two shits about where they shat.
But the cats? The cats were ninjas. You never saw them poop. Never. As a kid, I didn’t even connect the litter box in the laundry room to the act itself. It was just a weird sandbox that occasionally smelled bad. Cats were clean. Cats were discreet. Cats never embarrassed you in public. Cats never did anything wrong, at least not where you could see it. Something gets broken on your desk? Couldn’t be the cat; must have been the wind. Remote control chewed to shit? Goddamn dog again.
And that’s the beautiful, ugly, and completely honest setup for the whole goddamn human comedy, isn’t it?
Dogs are just nasty, honest animals. They shit where they stand. They wear their hearts, and their bowels, on their goddamn sleeves.
Cats? Cats are calculating. Cats are clean. Cats bury their shit.
You fast forward fifty years, and I’m watching these “casting couch” interviews, these beautiful, ugly, and completely honest little slices of modern depravity. And the interviewer asks the woman, “Do you have a partner?”
Some of them, they say yes. “Yes, I do. He’s the one.” And then they go into the next room, take off their clothes for some handsome photographer, and the next thing you know, the photographer is testing the boundaries, touching, probing, and she doesn’t pull back. And pretty soon, he’s having sex with her. A beautiful, simple, and completely honest transaction, just like the dog taking a shit on the sidewalk. Opportunistic. Unapologetic.
But the other ones, the interesting ones, they say, “No, I don’t have a partner.” And the interviewer pushes. “But you have somebody? How do you take care of yourself?” And they give that quiet, little, cat-like smile. “I have friends,” they say. “Just friends.”
Get it? That’s the cat burying its shit. That’s the quiet, beautiful, and completely calculated little lie that keeps the whole goddamn game going. They’re getting fucked, just like the other ones, but they’re doing it in the dark, in the quiet corners, and they’re calling it “friendship.” They’re selective. They choose. They plan.
And that’s the real punchline, isn’t it? Statistically speaking, ninety percent of women, when they break up with you, they’ve already got the next poor bastard lined up. He’s not a stranger; he’s a “friend.” He’s the guy you had dinner with last week, the one you met at the goddamn Christmas party. She’s been grooming him, quietly, patiently, burying her little emotional shits in his private litter box, just waiting for the right moment to make the trade. My South African ex, I caught her talking to her old high school boyfriend. I put my foot down. And the second I finally walked out for good? Boom. Right back to him. The “friend.” The backup plan. The quiet, little emergency exit she’d kept unlocked the whole goddamn time.
And they tell you it’s our fault the marriages end. Seventy-five percent of divorces are initiated by women. And the reasons? Not abuse. Not infidelity. No. It’s usually some vague, beautiful, and completely bullshit reason like “I wasn’t happy,” or “we grew apart.” Which is just a polite, quiet, and completely dishonest way of saying, “I found a better deal.”
I used to own a restaurant, Amalia’s. And I’d watch them. “Girls’ Night Out.” They’d come in, all dressed up, laughing too loud, drinking too much. And I’d take them. Into the bathroom. Out for a walk in the park. Didn’t even know my goddamn name. And you’d see the wedding ring, catching the light from the streetlamp, a beautiful, shiny, and completely meaningless little piece of jewelry.
Were they dogs then? Shitting right there in the open? Yeah. But only when they thought no one from their real life was watching. The rest of the time? Cats. Clean, quiet, and burying the evidence.
So what’s the point of this whole goddamn sermon?
It’s this: don’t be fooled by the litter box. Don’t be fooled by the clean fur and the quiet purr. They’re all shitting. They all have the same beautiful, ugly, and completely honest animal needs.
Some just have the good goddamn sense to bury it.
And maybe that’s the real difference between a dog and a cat. And maybe, just maybe, between a man and a woman.
Or maybe I’m just a drunk old bastard who’s spent too much time cleaning up shit. Both kinds.
