Dogs don't wash with me - moggies will always be the cat's whiskers

At the risk of being dog-tagged for life as a mutt-hater, I’m sticking to my view that cats make better pets than their canine cousins. With one exception.

Dogs keep you fitter – and the bigger the better. In fact, if you can afford to buy and feed a Pyrenean mountain dog, he’ll be happy to drag you on a double marathon ‘walkies’ over the nearest mountain range – in record time.

Before I came to Spain, my house in Manchester was like a Home for Lost Pussies. So many waifs and strays came and went that I swear our friendly little dog Carrie thought she was a moggy herself.

She was certainly adept at squeezing herself through the cat-flap as a quick means of exit, even if the poor mongrel never quite mastered the art of getting back in unassisted.

Because so much commitment is involved, I’ve not owned a dog since Carrie died aged 15 of a heart condition. However, my love affair with cats purrs along today at my villa near Guardamar, where I have two permanent residents and also spend considerably more on feeding the local stray and feral community than I do on myself. Hence most of them are even more, shall we say, 'rounded' than myself.

I also have my own two black cats, Tommy and Molly, though Molly has her own agenda - she moves in with Barbara and Ross in the next street whenever they are over from England. It might just have something to do with being the centre of attention.

The sad thing is that only two of the 41 villas in my immediate neighbourhood has a regular feline presence. In fact, there are only a handful of dogs as well, which is perhaps the reason our local Spanish vet bought his home slap bang in the middle of us. It's his way of keeping business and pleasure apart.

My biggest worry is what to do with Tommy and Molly if ill health forces me to return to the UK. The obvious thing is to take them with me - but I fear they may have trouble settling in because they can only miaow and purr in Spanish and Catalan. Not to mention the menace of moving to Manx-chester, the city which gave its name to cats with no tails.

Equally, there are residents who actually believe that feeding feral cats encourages an infestation of vermin. The reality is that where there are cats, there are unlikely to be rats. In fact, any roaming rodent that wanders into the vicinity of Tiddles’ mouth is likely to become rat-atouille in an instant.

In my last article on dogs and cats, I gave you chapter and verse on doggy poo and the filthy creatures which deposit and leave it as the staple diet for the soles of our shoes. I wish someone would invent incontinence pants for out-of-control growlers (that’s roughly 93 per cent of all dogs, by my reckoning) and with it redefine the expression ‘’doggy-bag’’.

I must emphasise here that a ‘’catty bag’’ is not the feline equivalent of a doggy bag, but a label one might put on a spiteful female of the human variety. I’m told that efforts were once made to breed a cross between a cat and a dog known as a ‘’catty bitch’’ but the animal was so venomous that scientists abandoned the project.

More seriously, cats are considerably less trouble than dogs. To start with, they never need a bath (just try giving them one and you may well get your head ripped off). They spend half their lives washing their body, legs and tail with their own saliva – and the other half trying to paw it all onto the top of their head, the one place their tongue can’t reach.

While Tiddles always washes herself, all Fido much prefers to wash YOUR face, hands, feet with a giant moist tongue that is as soft as a cat’s is rough. Keeping Fido himself clean is a major operation. The best bet is probably to plonk him in the bath under a warm shower, though that is a bit of a gamble in itself. He’ll either love it or make a dash for safety, leaving the entire house three inches deep in water on his romp to the open front door – and thence to the nearest garden wall for a mega-sniff of his pals’ doggy wee.

Unlike Fido and his mates, cats will also control their motions almost indefinitely. If there is ANY way Tiddles can avoid messing in the house, she will. I had one amazing female cat who, having sussed out the sewage system and knowing she’d fall off the seat if she tried to use the loo, always urinated in the bath. And immediately over the plughole, too. That’s what I call a well-drained pet (the puns get even worse!)

Every moggy will head instinctively for the great outdoors when nature calls. Tiddles’ biggest failure here is that she tends not to look while she is burying her poo. She prefers to whirl round and round kicking soil, gravel and defecation into the air.

The end product is often a mound of soil topped by a modicum of No.2 – perfect for Fido to stick his nose in next time he comes back from soiling the neighbourhood streets.

Yet overall, and despite my own bias, it seems that animal lovers generally prefer dogs – but only just. A survey of 3,000 people in the UK found that 31% cent of households owned dogs and 26% cats.

All I can say is that if people are happy combining walkies with cleaning up their dogs’ runnies, that is their business. Personally, I’d rather settle down with my cats and watch our favourite film.

The Mog-nificent Seven.

A tale of nine cats: My life has gone to the mogs

Molly: Not intelligent enough to have learning difficulties

THEY say that cats have nine lives. Well, my life has nine cats. At least it seems that way as just   about every waif and stray in the neighbourhood queues at my cat flap for its daily food fix.
Officially I have three moggies. The first is Mad Molly, who is small, black, weirdly mis-shapen and has learning difficulties (the description of her previous owner, not mine).
Poor Molly’s not intelligent enough to have learning difficulties. The cat flap’s been there for three years and she still doesn’t know how to use it.
 MOGGY No.2 is Geoffrey (Geoffrey Boycat to give him his full name – apt for an animal that moves as slowly as his cricketing namesake used to score runs for England). My Geoff is a black, long-haired softie of a stray who was probably lost or left by his previous owner a long time ago.
Certainly someone cared for him because he was neutered and healthy when he first started coming to my place.
In fact, it’s possible he still has another home because he sometimes goes missing for a day or two.
MOGGY No.3 is Henry, a young tabby who turned up at my back door last autumn with a hairless, bleeding chest and a mega-miaow.
‘’I suspect he’s been in a fight but I can stitch it up, no problem,’’ said the vet. ‘’I would advise you to have him neutered as soon as possibly, though. Not only will it stop him fighting, it will also help to keep the cat population down and make him more of a house cat.’’
Twenty-four hours later, Henry moved in - neatly stitched, snipped and tucked. When his chest took longer than expected to heal, I took him back to the vet…and a blood test revealed he was FIV-positive, the feline equivalent of HIV.
‘’It’s nothing to worry about,’’ said the vet. ‘’He was almost certainly born with it. It’s quite common and he has a good chance of leading a normal life. Because he has been neutered, he’s highly unlikely to pass the FIV on, even through sharing food bowls with other cats.’’
All of which makes Henry a bit special. After all we’ve been mutually stitched up – him by the vet and me by Henry, who could have saved me a lot of money had he turned up on someone else’s doorstep! (I’m joking, of course).
Add to Molly, Geoffrey and Henry the half-a dozen feral waifs and strays who turn up at various times of the day and night – and the menagerie-a-trois moves into mega-moggy mode. And thereby hangs another tail…the tale of why I prefer cats to dogs.

Henry: I had him stitched up, then he stitched ME up!

Now I’ve written a couple of light-hearted articles in the past about the respective merits and otherwise of each species, so apologies to those who have previously been subjected to what follows.Cats are to me the most mysterious, fascinating and wonderful creatures on earth. Not only can they read your mind, they can also manipulate it to their own advantage. That's the voice of 40 years of cat ownership speaking. Oh, and I didn't own any of my moggies - they owned me.
I was THEIR pet, not the reverse. If it didn't suit them to live in my home, they'd have been off like a flash to appoint some other purr soul as honorary daily food-and-milk supplier. Some of us are cat people, some dog people and some, like myself, care for both. Only we usually have a preference and in my household, moggies have always held the edge. To start with, they allow their owner more independence.
If you're not around for a few days, it doesn't really matter as long as someone is there to feed them.
Leave a dog on its own for two days and you're not only in serious trouble with the animal authorities, the poor mutt will also have moped itself into a candidate for the canine nuthouse.
Then there is the cleanliness issue.
Dogs love to pepper their noses with the ghastliest of savouries left for them by their fellow barkers. The browner and smellier the better for Fido and his pals, and the worse for those of us whose shoes squelch the stink into our rugs and carpets when we get home.
From my experience, there's nothing more frustrating than trying to house-train a puppy. It will pee and poo to order providing you let it out a minimum of 250 times a day.
But pop out yourself for five minutes and you open the door on your return to a mound of doggy dung and a floor awash with a ship-load of urine.
The yelps when Little Poo is left momentarily on its own are bad enough. But they are nothing to the yelps of human anger that boom into the stratosphere when Mr and Mrs Owner discover what poochie was up to while they were out of the room.
Yet to a dog lover, those Close Encounters of the T*rd Kind are all acceptable in exchange for the pure, uncomplicated love you are guaranteed in return for just being there.
Who cares that Fido spends all day rolling in mud, urine, vomit and the faeces of every animal on earth? It only takes a couple of hours to clean him up - and then those luscious licks and doggy hugs make it all worthwhile. Unless, like me, you're already so browned off by those pooper bloopers that you've vowed never to have a dog again.
Cats are a complete contrast. House-trained before they've ever seen a house, all a kitten needs is a litter tray and it will wee and poo into it ad infinitum.
Mind you, removing the hail of stones that hurtle around the house in mini-puss's attempts to bury the residue with its lethal back feet can take twice as long as clearing up after any untrained puppy.
Moggies also need no teaching when it comes to cleaning themselves. And thereby hangs another tale - plus body, head and legs.
Before you know it, puss has licked herself bald and is coughing up a two-ton hair ball. You rush her to the vet thinking she's on her last legs but fear not...they all do it. Unless, like my Molly, the furry one suffers from feline asthma and vomits up nothing but wheeze.

Geoffrey: Does he have another home?

If your cat is a Tom, then you have another problem or three. First and worst is his territory spraying, and the pungent, difficult-to-remove smell it creates.
Then there's his sexual appetite, which he'll inevitably impose on all the local moggettes - accompanied by a cat's chorus loud enough to drown out a 30-piece orchestra. The solution to that one is simple.
Have Tiger Tom snipped in the bud when he's a few months old and the spraying and s****ing will be a thing of the past. If you have a dog, you will of course need to take it for walks.
Unless you are a lazy bitch like one or two of my friends - and end up with a mutt that's even fatter than its owner. In such instances, at least fatso and her pet won't need a pooper scooper to clean up the dog mess, though not that many people seem to bother if the pavements in my locality here in Spain's Costa Blanca  are anything to go by.
People not clearing up the mess left by their dogs in public places is a big problem everywhere. But here's a question for you: If you saw a threatening-looking yob's pit-bull pooing outside your home and he didn't clean up the mess (the yob, not the pitbull), what would you do?
If your answer is 'nothing', score a brownie point for honesty. As for me, I'll stick with my moggies. I just wish they could purr in English.
PS. I have a confession to make. I wrote this article some time ago and the animal personnel at Casa Donna has changed considerably since then.  Watch this space for news of Tom, Dick and Harry,  Feraldine the Throat and the Black and White Mogstrel show. Yes, I feed my pets on Grin-a-lot!