Dogs vs. Cats: Why Literature and Life Favour the Canine Muse

Dear Reader,

The age-old divide between dog and cat lovers has been much accentuated these days by social media—for every reel of a spoilt orange cat pushing an expensive porcelain trinket off the tabletop there’s a reel of a golden retriever brandishing its owner’s underwear in front of guests. But the battle between the two is not all cutesy. It gets ideologically violent when it comes to deciding who among the two is the better muse. Are cats born existentialists who can take you to the abyss (and leave you there)? Are dogs born optimists who can turn the scrambled egg of your life into sunny-side-up just by wagging their tail? The jury is still out.

My vote goes to dogs, although I rarely miss the opportunity to cuddle a cat (actually, I am attracted to all furry creatures). What tilts the scale in favour of dogs for me is what I see in their eyes and in those of cats. When I meet the cold green stare of cats what I see are calculations about the next meal, the next escapade, or just plain disdain—all of which are fine as long as we do not read philosophy into those attitudes. It is stretching it a bit too far if we see, say, the key to survival in their plain greed for Whiskas. And no, I don’t associate cats with literature or books except when they snooze on them in the loaf pose.

Dogs’ eyes, on the other hand, are full of brown earth and soul and they appeal not so much for a bone as for love. They know how to love and give it back many times over. It is a godly quality, and eminent personalities have remarked on it too. For instance, in his Muntakhab-ul-Tawarikh, Abdul Qadir Badayuni says that Mughal emperor Akbar believed “that a dog had ten virtues, and that a man, if he possessed only one of them, would become a saint.”

The book lying on my table now is the recent memoir of Markus Zusak (of The Book Thief fame) called Three Wild Dogs, where he says right at the beginning, “We are entering my life as a dog”. What follows is a tale of difficult love with three rambunctious dogs that is sometimes too twee for my taste, but I can see where the sentimentality gushes forth from—after all, I too have a “rescued” dog who has rescued me. I even think that a little bit of sentimentality is kosher when talking of dogs, since they are powerful emotions personified.

However, Virginia Woolf’s Flush: A Biography, written from the p.o.v. of the eponymous cocker spaniel who belonged to the Victorian poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, is not schmaltzy in the least. Flush casts a critical eye on social mores, sparing none except his invalid mistress, where his objectivity falters. He is intensely jealous of Elizabeth’s admirer and future husband, Robert Browning, but later makes peace with him. In fact, Flush and Robert are quite alike in their giving, expansive love for Elizabeth, a love that sets her free. Contrasted to it is the relationship between Elizabeth and her tyrannical father, who wants to control every aspect of her life.

Controlling love is the reason why I don’t like the idea of training dogs to obey every human command. To control dogs too much is to deny them their dog-ness, I feel. A trainer we once called home to discipline our wayward, anxiety-ridden, mercurial puppy sagely advised us to train ourselves instead to accept him as he is, instead of trying to control his behaviour. I am grateful to him for those words for which he blithely charged us Rs. 5,000. As Zusak says in Three Wild Dogs, “After all, what do you get a dog for if not for the chaos itself—to ask anarchy straight to your door?”

The award-winning Chinese movie, Black Dog, now playing on Amazon Prime, beautifully brings out the bond forged between a lonely outsider, who cannot abide by the state’s decision to regulate the lives of its citizens, and a feral dog, who has been stamped by the state as a stray to be culled because he roams free.

 Although dogs are often deemed to be “dirty” in popular imagination, they are accorded a high place in Indian literature. Bibek Debroy’s book, Sarama and her Children, documents the dogs of myths, epics, and fiction. The most notable among them, of course, is the dog who accompanies the Pandavas in their journey to heaven. Dharma is at the apex of the moral scheme of the Mahabharata and the dog is revealed to be dharma personified, Dharma the father of Yudhisthira. That’s very high praise indeed and maybe something to be remembered by all those who find pleasure in kicking street dogs.

Speaking of street dogs, they can be dangerous at times, of course. But dogs, as descendants of wolves, are meant to be fierce and we cannot deny them their wildness. In Anuradha Roy’s novel, The Earthspinner, there is an endearing  pahadi stray dog called Chinna, who is described affectionately by Roy in an interview: “Chinna knows nothing of religion or human warfare. He wanders between classes, castes, localities, managing a biscuit here, a chunk of meat there. He is very much a distillation of all the strays I’ve known–an archetypal element in any Indian landscape and a creature that unites as much it divides.”

Roy herself as at least four pahadi dogs at her home in Ranikhet, and one of the reasons I go to Insta is to get her delightful updates on them. Contrary to the belief that women are more likely to keep cats than dogs, there is a host of female authors who were dog-owners. Elizabeth Barrett Browning had Flush; Woolf had a cocker spaniel, Pinka; and Emily Brontë had a bull mastiff cross called Keeper, and they were inseparable.

There are so many stories of dogs in literature and films, right from the Greek hellhound, Cerberus to, say, the superhit Kannada movie, 777 Charlie, that I can hold forth on the topic forever. So, I will stop here, but not before recommending Anil Menon’s vivacious review of Paul Zacharia’s novel, True Story of a Writer, a Philosopher and a Shape-Shifter. It is a madcap, irreverent novel that has to be read, says Menon. I agree. And, it has a dog named Brother Dog who pointedly has no fraternal feelings for anybody who wants to lay claims on his mistress, Rosi. Check out the review here.

I read that scientists are working on a vaccine to lengthen the span of dogs’ lives, and it makes me ecstatic. All you dog lovers out there, I hope your angels lead long, healthy lives. May the woof be with you for decades.

See you again soon.

Till then,

Anusua Mukherjee

Deputy Editor, Frontline