Mariah Foley Staff Writer

Everybody loves a good catfight, but fights that break out between cat people and dog people are more prevalent and much less appreciated.  People love their pets, and that’s understandable. However, fighting about your love for your feline or canine, or their love for you, is ridiculous.

For one, animals are just that – animals. All animal brains work the same way. They all rely on basic instinct, need for food and water, etc. All animals are products of their environment, so if your pet has been trained and treated well, their behavior will reflect that treatment.

Cats and dogs in the wild act very similar. They both hunt, they both hide from predators, and they both mate and feed their young in similar ways. There are many breeds of both dogs and cats that cannot survive in the wild, like lap dogs and dwarf cats. Although not all pets behave the same way, all animals live their lives based solely on instinct.

A pet may recognize and comfort its human companion; it may react to situations in very humanistic ways. Your pet may show affection when it is cared for. Your pet may beg you for attention or whine when you’re gone, or curl up next to you in bed, but the point arguing pet owners need to understand is that your pet doesn’t care about you.

Lastly, it doesn’t matter whether your pet is a cat or dog, they still are all animals, and they grow as products of their environment. They both function on the same mental level, and neither one is better than the other; everything is based on the owners preference.

Many students have started movements that argue for preference rights and freedom of expression in the fields of gender, self-image, religion, and extracurricular behaviors. People are very adamant about being accepting toward each other on things are may be important to other individuals.  While gender preference or religion preference may be a worldwide issue, so is the battle between cat-people and dog-people.

When you’re about to get into a fight over something as trivial as the animal you have for a pet, just remember that your status will not rise and your situation will not change based only on your preferred choice of pet.