The answer of this question would be pretty varied depending on who you ask and which pets they have experience with and the debate can get pretty heated. If there’s one thing all pet owners have in common it’s that they love their pets unconditionally.
Previous studies have indicated that some pet owners might feel a stronger emotional connection to dogs than cats and might be more inclined to spend on their care. This could be due to the perception that cats are more independent and require less attention. However, it’s worth noting that these studies might not be universally representative and may overlook cultural variances in pet relationships. A team of scientists led by Dr Peter Sandøe of the University of Copenhagen decided to investigate further.
“We and others have found that people are willing to spend much less on their cats than on their dogs,” said Sandøe, first author of the study in Frontiers in Veterinary Science. “We wanted to find out whether cats could eventually end up having the same high status as dogs do today.
The study of 3 European countries
The scientists employed a survey company to recruit representative samples of adult pet owners from three countries: Denmark, Austria, and the United Kingdom. These three western and central European countries are similar in many ways, but they all urbanized at different points in history: the UK earliest, Denmark latest, and Austria between the two. The scientists hypothesized that a more distant history with rural animals among the general population is a cultural factor that might affect societal attitudes towards pets today.
The scientists’ final sample of pet owners consisted of 2,117 people who owned either dogs or cats: 844 dog owners, 872 cat owners, and 401 owners who owned both dogs and cats. These respondents were asked to answer questions aimed at understanding a variety of different dimensions of care.
These questions included the Lexington attachment to pets scale, which aims at understanding owners’ emotional attachment, as well as questions about how much they invest in veterinary care and their expectations for available care.
The Results
The scientists found that people appeared to care more about their dogs than their cats in all countries across all measures. They had higher attachment scores for their dogs, insured their dogs more often, generally expected more treatment options to be available for dogs, and would pay more for those treatments.
There were striking differences in attitudes between countries, however all 3 countries favoured dogs over cats based on survey results.
“While people care more about their dogs than their cats in all countries, the degree of difference varied dramatically between countries,” said Sandøe. “It doesn’t therefore seem to be a universal phenomenon that people care much less about their cats than their dogs. We suggest instead that the difference is likely to depend on cultural factors, including whether the animals spend a lot of time with their owners in the home.”
The pattern repeated across other measures. The difference between dog and cat owners’ reported emotional attachment was greater in Denmark than the other countries, and Danish owners were much less likely to have bought insurance for their cats than their dogs. The difference in willingness to pay for treatment was again much greater in Denmark.
“There seems to be no natural limit to how much people will end up caring about their cats compared to their dogs,” concluded Sandøe. “The British are often portrayed as a nation of cat lovers, which is certainly confirmed by our study. The Danes have a long way to go but they may eventually get there.”
Possibly linked to agriculture history
The scientists suggested that although these results looked at 3 countries, the patterns would likely repeat in other parts of the world given the roles cats and dogs have played alongside humans for thousands of years.
References:
Lexington Attachment to Pets Study – LAPS