Are Cats Indeed the Superior Breed?

I am posting my four o'clock waaaaay past the hour ... but I'll post anyway.

A pang of guilt coursed through my veins as I thought to myself "curses! missing my appointment with self, yet again..." It was four o'clock and I was on the freeway, perilously negotiating anything that looked shiny --- was that water or black ice? On a freeway where traffic typically hurls itself forward the movement today was positively glacial. Even the SUVs crawled along with the rest of us. Then a thought occurred to me, I can keep my appointment with self, right here, in the car, on the freeway and then I can write later.

It is now later.

You could be excused for thinking that I live somewhere on the north eastern part of North America where news of ice storms and power outages has been hogging the headlines ....oh nooooo, my little chickadee, I live on the west coast in the city of Vancouver. The snow behaves very nicely here, it stays up on the mountaintops where it belongs and turns to rain down here where we mortals live, the better to keep the streets clean for our many visitors and most welcome tourists. Oh yummy we love their money and the least we can do is keep our city clean --- the rain does wonders for the municipal budget!

Its not just that we are at sea level but that we enjoy the benefits of the warm Japan Current. Understand that "warm" here is a measure of interpretation by aspiring meteorologists, although I must say we do have hundreds if not thousands partake in the annual New Year's Day Polar Bear Swim at English Bay and apparently the water is not cold enough for some of these touched sapiens as buckets of ice are added to the mix in the Bay. Curiously these naked bodies come out of the frigid waters all pink, not blue, after having dipped themselves in the ocean. Some of them even linger on in the waters, but that I think is more a comment on their post New Year's Eve state of sobriety than on the warmness of the Japan Current.

Oh but I digress. Occasionally all this goes to you know where in a hand basket and the temperature drops and the snow stays as snow all the way down to our very own streets. Chaos. No one knows how to drive in this white stuff. I mean unless you are a regular Whistler type, why get snow tires anyway? The all weather variety suits us well here, and never mind, for the odd year when snow does come all the way down, well, rain follows and washes it all away in no time flat ... EXCEPT... except when it's a cold snap and the rain does not follow and the snow freezes and hangs around for a day or two or even a week! The sun melts the ice but come dusk its icicles we see forming. Today it is one of those EXCEPT days, and tomorrow they promise more cold. Zero temperatures we are not used to, but below zero? What do you mean cloth coats are as warm as furs?

I would ordinarily not bother venturing out in this type of weather. I can walk to the local grocery store for food and I work from my home office so no commute, but I am looking after a trio of saucy cats for friends while they are away in Europe. They, the cats that is, are all rescue cats and at least two are very skittish so someone they already know (and get along with) was preferable over another kind albeit a strange, soul. I'm not really a cat person so this is an honour bestowed. So here I was at four o'clock this Thursday, on my way to feeding these cats. All good, all done.

Oh, I have become the cats' best friend --- all three of them, yes, including the two timid ones, greet me with eager faces on my arrival, however, unlike a dog, they do not see me to the door when I leave. So is it true, are cats our masters? More disturbingly to the point, are cats the superior breed after all?