Are Ailurophiles More Considerate Than Cynophilists?

By Ruth aka Kattaddorra

I was fascinated when Riverside Robyn in a comment gave us the word ‘ailurophile’ for a cat lover and have searched for the equivalent for a dog lover. It is ‘cynophilist’.

It sounds a very strange word but Michael agrees it is the correct one. This is not an attack on dog lovers, far from it as I too love dogs, but I love cats more. Cats get a lot of bad press from people who don’t like them, but why, when dogs can be so much more of a noise nuisance do they not get bad press too?

Tom cats yowling in the night get buckets of water thrown at them, yet a dog shut out in a kennel howling and barking half the night has to be accepted. This is what is happening at our home, our new neighbour has a rottweiler in a kennel and two jack russells in a kennel joined to it, both have runs attached.

The first night they barked and howled and whined and bayed, my sister Barbara describes the rottweiler’s noise as a ‘sonic boom’ and she’s right, it comes from the very depths of the dog, echoes around the kennel and out into the atmosphere.

Worse for us is that these kennels are just the other side of the shared garden fence and literally 5 feet from our living room window. He actually had them right by the fence until we asked him nicely to move them, thinking he would to the far side of the garden.

But no, a few feet was all and he now thinks it’s acceptable that as they are a bit quieter at night and we are allowed a few hours sleep, we should put up with the noise from them so close during the day.

‘Dogs bark’ says he, well yes they do and we accept that and are prepared to give and take, but if we wanted the noisy barking by our own window, we would have dogs ourselves.

‘They will get used to you’ says he, meaning of course we will have to get used to them! Thankfully our 2 cats seem to have accepted that they are there and the noise doesn’t bother them, they don’t go in other people’s gardens anyway as ours is cat friendly and they can also go over to the embankment to their hunting ground without bothering anyone.

Walter had one word to say about those dogs to us, he stood in our garden and looked their noisy way and shouted ****WHACK****. Is that the equivalent of us shouting ***SHUTTTTUP***.

I must admit I’ve forgotten I’m a lady and shout some very rude words at those pesky dogs. There’s a stunned silence and they begin again. One of our neighbours heard some of my colourful words and was quite amused, oh dear that’s my good name gone, although she did say she had shouted a few unrepeatable words too lol

The problem is that it’s easy to blame the dogs, even to hate the dogs for our lack of sleep and the stressful daytime noise, but it’s not their fault. Why have dogs living permanently outside, they are not pets, pets live in the house.

Why do some dog lovers think that everyone else has to listen to their dogs, doesn’t the barking get on their own nerves? Not all dog lovers are so selfish of course, we have other neighbours with lovely dogs that they keep in the house, they don’t expect the whole neighbourhood to share their passion for their pets and their aggravating noise.

People with dogs may argue that cats can be a pest to people who don’t like them. Well maybe so if they have irresponsible caretakers, but one thing for sure, cats don’t keep the neighbours awake night after night and they don’t shatter the peace hour after hour during the day.

If cats made a constant noise like some dogs do there would be even more bad press about them and I for one would worry about the effect on neighbours, yet so many people with noisy dogs think others just have to accept their noise.

So, are ailurophiles more considerate than cynophilists?

Would you worry if your pet was disturbing the peace? Oh yes there are laws supposed to stop it, but how effective are they? Not very by the seem of it, we know a family who have had barking dogs not far from them for months now, diaries have to be kept, evidence shown, the dog owner warned, maybe it will come to an unpleasant court case, meanwhile the noise goes on and on and on ……..