Is there any way not to see a subtext in this story about an Israeli experiment to see whether dogs and cats can get along?
Haaretz reports: "'Most people think that cats and dogs are opposites that cannot get along,' says Netali Feurstein, a master's student at Tel Aviv University. 'I think that is incorrect.' According to her, the cat and the dog were domesticated thousands of years ago, but communication between them is something new."
The true test would be whether longhaired dachshunds and hairless cats would get along.
ReplyDeleteThat would never happen. But, unlike regular cats, these couldn't even hurl hairballs at their canine opponents. A weak enemy indeed.
ReplyDeleteUnless they snuck up on the dachshund while it was sleeping and licked it, and then coughed up the dachshund's hair as hairballs. It would be so . . . Mujahideen-turned-terrorist. (I don't know if that makes sense to anyone but me.)
ReplyDeleteThat's a very strange concept, to have a one's own body (or fur) turned by an outsider into a weapon against itself. The only other example I can think of is brain-washing, and that's really not the same thing.
ReplyDeleteI also can't help but read Art Spiegelman's Maus into your reading of this. To extend that metaphor, dogs and cats getting along means that Americans and Germans really can get along.
ReplyDeleteBut to overextend that metaphor even further, what could represent Palestinians? If Jews are mice are Palestinians hampsters? Do mice and hampsters get along? Sounds like there's a dissertation in this.