The real reason we love dogs. - By Jon Katz - Slate Magazine

So I'm reading this article about why people loves dogs.

Here's the important passage:

Psychologist Brian Hare of Harvard has also studied the human-animal bond and reports that dogs are astonishingly skilled at reading humans' patterns of social behavior, especially behaviors related to food and care. They figure out our moods and what makes us happy, what moves us. Then they act accordingly, and we tell ourselves that they're crazy about us.

. . .

If the dog's love is just an evolutionary trick, does that diminish it? I don't think so. Dogs have figured out how to insinuate themselves into human society in ways that benefit us both. We get affection and attention. They get the same, plus food, shelter, and protection. To grasp this exchange doesn't trivialize our love, it explains it.

The bolded item threw into relief why I am a cat person and, if I were a bettin' man, I would argue that more Platonists (or Apollonians) are cat people and more Aristotelians (or Dionysians) are dog people. Dogs give us affection and attention, but cats allow us to live out the other side of the God-Human equation. Cats love us for a little while, when we feed them, for example, but they can get food on their own and even the best cat is mischievous. The worst cats are downright malicious and/or perfidious.

Cats, like children, are fickle, and like adults are faithless. They might want to be good (using the litter box or going outside) but sometimes they're just lazy. Dogs are built with their nails out, but cats must put at least some thought into brandishing their claws, which makes their attacks seem premeditated and intentional.

If dogs are our true friends, our faithful children, the cats are our true selves, our faithless acolytes. They reaffirm for us the possibility of a loving God, for who other than That would put up with the host of transgressions? If we can sustain our cat, we who are easily moved to anger, who have our own headaches, whose capacity for forgiveness is so easily overmatched, then certainly some other Providence can sustain us.

Read: The real reason we love dogs. - By Jon Katz - Slate Magazine