President Donald Trump recently tweeted that “THE RIGGED AND CORRUPT MEDIA IS THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” At first, I scoffed at the tweet, writing it off as just another example of the President getting a little too worked up and sending out some all-caps nonsense for the American people to rip to shreds online, but then I reconsidered: Throughout all of my life, the media has indoctrinated me to believe cats and dogs are always opposed to each other: TV shows like CatDog and Tom and Jerry show cats and dogs at odds with one another, instilling the idea of the separation of the two in countless children at a young age. Cats and dogs are rarely ever portrayed in media as being friends and able to get along—is there a larger conspiracy afoot? Is this a topic worthy of its own national emergency or government shutdown? Regardless, I think it’s important that we all know not only is it perfectly OK to love cats and dogs, but we should all learn to love them for what they are.

My family has both a cat and a dog. I won’t give out their names because I’m not sure how they would handle the extra attention. Sure, they have their differences, like my dog’s insistence on being loud versus my cat’s desire for a more quiet environment, but for as much as cats and dogs are made out to be polar opposites, mine are similar in many ways. My dog is a small dog, and my cat is a large cat, so they’re about the same size. They both love to play, even as they’ve gotten older, and my cat even plays with my dog’s toys, and vice versa. They used to like to play together, too, but once my dog found out that a cat’s claws are sharper than his and can cause an impressive amount of pain to the face when stricken, he figured it was time to take the L and move on. What else do they have in common? Well, they both sleep most of the day, they love watching sports (baseball for my dog, basketball for my cat), neither of them smell great and neither can truly ever decide if they want to go outside or not.

Not only do my cat and dog share individual similarities, but they even work together well as a team. Take this example: My dog loves to chew things up, and my cat loves to jump up onto tables and wreak havoc on them. Eventually, they found out that if the cat gets on the table and pushes things onto the floor, the dog and can then take those things and destroy them with his teeth. Everyone wins!

Look, maybe I just want to write about my pets (who doesn’t?), but these personal stories are all indicative of one thing: Cats and dogs don’t have to be rivals, and we should learn to be loving and welcoming of both species. 

Jackson Bayer is a senior creative writing major. He can be reached at 581-2812 or at jcbayer@eiu.edu.