I can feel it. Some of the readers of this piece are set to argue that their beloved cat can’t be a conservative because their owner is not and even doesn’t socialize with any conservatives. But let’s review the facts.
Bring a box of stuff into your home that is shared with a cat. Just set the box down as soon as you enter your abode. So your cat can’t see it. But within seconds your cat will have heard, smelled, or tasted the new stuff in the air. In a moment your cat is there, examining the new things.
You might say this proves nothing, just that cats are curious. Curiosity killed the cat after all. Well cats may well be curious but I don’t think that’s in play here. Your cat will sniff and then mark the box. The marking is done by the cat scraping its cheek along an edge of the box. That cheek has scent glands.
Now move that box to another room or 10 feet from where you originally set it. Again, in only moments the cat will have spied the new position and sniffed and marked the box again. It already knows what the box is so it’s not curiosity. Cats don’t handle change well.
You may have noticed this before. Like when you moved and your cat barely came out in the first day after the move.
Conservatives don’t handle change well either. That is very close to the actual definition of conservative. Don’t believe me? Talk to a conservative about human rights. They will likely tell you they are definitely on the right side of history for this one and believe in equal rights for all ethnicities. But fifty years ago the conservative view was much different. Glacially the shift came, is still happening.
The modern conservative will also tell you that gay marriage is very controversial, pitting moral religion against those with questionable lifestyles. The conservative view doesn’t acknowledge that human rights still aren’t perfect even in the alleged free world. I expect fifty years from now conservatives will have moved a step again toward more liberal views.
The way cats don’t handle change well just shows them to be the conservatives they are.
Almost everything involving common pets gets put on a cat/dog spectrum. I am hardly going to change this. So I will tell you that dogs are nothing more than liberals and socialists. You might not like this position either. I will just say that dogs, just like liberals and socialists, try to do what’s best for the pack.
I am now going to take the Canadian political spectrum to define liberals as being different from socialists. On the entrenched spectrum of politics, conservatives are on the right, liberals are in the middle and socialists are on the left.
What I take this to mean is that liberals are after what is good for the pack as long as it doesn’t put the liberal out too much. And socialists believe so much in the good of the pack that they will support even things that hurt themselves as long as it is for the common good.
Now that we know cats are conservative and dogs are more socialist, let’s laugh at a couple people that seem ignorant of this model.
Don Cherry is that famous hockey commentator that is so conservative that he still bashes eastern European hockey players. For many years he was a famous dog owner. Does he realize that his loveable pooch spends its spare time being a socialist? That pooch is probably plotting Cherry’s downfall and the rise of the eastern European players. For the good of all hockey.
For the laughable non conservative that owns a cat, we don’t have to go any further than me. Oh I used to try to be non partisan and for some time I tried being a political cartoonist. But my long history of paying attention to politics led me to see that the majority governments of Brian Mulroney (Progressive Conservative) and Stephen Harper (Conservative) allowed these conservatives to engage in more scandals per unit time than any centre or leftist government has done in Canada.
So I am either centrist or leftist and I own a very conservative cat. She is so conservative she wears exclusively black. She loves nothing better than to follow her routines. But I am still her master and thus in charge. Changing her litter regularly is clearly good for all. So despite the conservative cat, I keep my socialist leaning spirit intact. Maybe I’m not so laughable after all. That is, despite having to clean up a conservative’s litter.
