A poll by the greetings card company Hallmark tells us that 23% of British men spent time talking to their cat on the phone. How do you arrange that? There are devices these days that feed cats remotely and let you talk to them at the same time.
What is particularly interesting is that this percentage is greater than for women. I wonder what that tells us? Does it mean that British men just like to talk to their cat on the phone more than British women or does it indicate something more than that? I’ll let you decide.
The British are considered to be animal lovers so this survey will not surprised people who live in other countries. Apparently though 18% of American animal owners have spoken to their pet on Skype or while using some other video online chatting software.
Another interesting fact that came out of this Hallmark survey, which I don’t find difficult to believe is that half of the British people surveyed said that they’d rather spend time with their cat then with another person.
20% of British cats are taken on holiday with the family while 15% are served specially made meals daily.
The other statistics are somewhat predictable namely that 30% of women and about 18% of men buy their cat a birthday card or present.
Another interesting statistic is that almost 37% of British men have tried to teach their cat to perform a stunt or trick. I wonder whether this last statistic has been born out of the online video. Funny cat videos can, exceptionally, make the video maker quite a lot of money through advertising. You will need to get millions of hits but then some of them do get that and the most successful get hundreds of millions of views which can earn the video maker a decent living from a single short video.
Several years ago, I would call my house at least once a day from work just so my dogs and cats could hear my voice.
No fancy device used. Just a plain answering machine that they could hear as I spoke the message.
I’m not sure how they all felt about it. But, it made me feel good and a little less guilt-ridden for leaving them alone.