Saturday 15 March 2008

Paws for Thought


I have been reading A. Waller Hastings
and I was very struck by this extract:

"I am not aware that this aspect has been observed before, but almost inevitably, "good" characters in Disney cartoon are either dogs or dog-lovers. Cats, on the other hand, tend to be viscious, and cat-lovers are evil or morally obtuse....There are some exceptions to this latter characteristic (The Aristocats, the eponymous hero of Oliver!), but none that I can think of for the positive moral value of dogs."

Crosscurrents of Children's Literature.
An Anthology of Texts & Criticism ed. J.D. Stable et al.
OUP, 2007

Dear Professor A. Waller Hastings,

I agree

Yours sincerely,
Poppy
(Cocker Spaniel)
X

A big shout out to my pal Quincy
Yay, Quincy!

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm on the disneyland team of good!I love dogs, but I'm not a fan of cats.

Somehow the disney endorsement makes me feel a little shallow and cheap though...

Mary said...

And if you like both cats and dogs?

Anonymous said...

I think you should read p13 of the Weekend section of today's Daily Telegraph title "The Sermons of the Dog Whisperer". Am not sure how to provide a link to the article.

PS - cats can be cool too, just not in the same room as Poppy ideally.

dottycookie said...

Now I am in a quandary - I was brought up in a dog-loving, cat-tolerating household, and now I rather like the independence of cats, but not the beasts themselves as they make me sneeze. Dogs are lovely but the thought of walking everywhere with a little plastic bag doesn't appeal to me at all. What does that make me (other than terminally confused)?

dragonfly said...

I have two (very) muddy paws who'd like to sign along with Poppy at my feet...

Kitten's Lost Her Mittens said...

I am a cat person (well, I like dogs a lot, too, but I like them best when they belong to other people). I have noticed this phenomenon of dog=good, cat=bad, and I'm not a fan! Dogs get a reputation as loving, trusting, and loyal, and cats get a reputation as disdainful and aloof. But my babies aren't like that! They love to be cuddled and loved, and they are happiest when they are with us. Sooo...I guess I didn't really have a point to make, just needed to get that out there!

Ginnie said...

Quincy says, "Woof!" back to Poppy! Actually, if they met, Quincy would never stop barking, I'm afraid. He somehow hasn't grasped the concept of having a dog for a friend. Only as an excuse for a barking marathon. And don't get him started on cats. I'm sure he agrees with Poppy on that one.

BreadBox said...

There are occasional nice cats: "The Aristocats" comes to mind. We are a dual-species family (triple if you count the humans!)

N.

BreadBox said...

Ack. How'd I miss the fact that the post actually said what I was going to say? It's been a long day.

N.