Are Dogs More Faithful than Cats?

by Sarah Hartwell

Dogs and cats behave differently towards humans because they evolved in the wild to have different social structures and different hunting strategies. Dogs live and hunt communally and their survival strategy is a tight-knit pack with a hierarchy where every individual knows who is boss to it and who it can boss around; they catch prey larger than themselves and the catch is shared with others. 

Dogs need to know their ranking in a pack for the pack to work together efficiently. Cats form loose colonies based on the availability of food in their area, but they usually hunt alone; they hunt prey smaller than themselves and do not share their food with other adult cats. Both species will scavenge; dogs will normally only allow other pack members to scavenge the same place, cats may tolerate other cats being present if there is enough food present.

Dogs are pack animals and are subservient to a pack leader; in the domestic environment, you are the pack leader and your dog does what it is told. What appears to be faithfulness is often the submissive behavior of an animal evolved to be social. Cats do not form hierarchical packs, but they do form colonies based around related cats. The females form the a loose hierarchy while the males are more solitary and often itinerant, visiting different females in different parts of their territory. Cats initially view you as individuals sharing the same space and their attachment to you depends on your behavior towards them - a bullied cat leaves or retaliates, a bullied dog all too often comes back for more. Feline aloofness is the indifferent behavior of an animal which does not live in strictly hierarchical communities and has not needed to develop canine-style social behavior.

Submissive Love

In cruel experiments, fully conscious dogs have been vivisected by their scientist owners to see how "faithful" they remain. Despite the most appalling things being done to them, the dogs licked their owner's hand during the experiments. Because the owner is considered the pack leader, the dogs remained obedient and submissive in spite of the most appalling mistreatment. In fact the dogs remained "faithful" until they had effectively been tortured to death. Thankfully these experiments are no longer performed, but this side of a dog's character can be seen in the classical image of the mistreated pet dog who remains faithful to its abusive owner. Basically it doesn't know what else to do.