Buzzfeed put our state on the list of “Top Dog-Loving-Cat-Haters.” The only good thing about this is that Texas is not No. 1. Our state comes in fourth behind Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, like it does on a lot of other lists. Texas households are not quite twice as likely to have dogs than they are to have cats. (Buzzfeed got the data to make this list from the AVMA’s U.S. Pet Ownership and Demographics Sourcebook. I want to see the rest of the data, but Robin refuses to buy the report.)
Where do cat lovers dominate? Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Connecticut. Lots of families include cats in Washington, Oregon, Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and New York.
Some states have a balance of dog and cat households, but the South is definitely into dogs.
I think it’s kind of unfortunate to frame the love of pets this way. Even in Louisiana, 26 percent of households include cats, and fewer than half include dogs. I’m guessing there’s some overlap there in the “pet-loving” households, so it could be that half of the pet-loving households include both dogs AND cats. In Texas, 43 percent of human households have dogs and 28 percent have cats. There’s probably a lot of overlap here too, and it might mean that more than half of the pet-loving households include both cats and dogs.
Although we don’t have dogs in our household, our human sure has some in her heart. I enjoy the shoes she wears to walk with her dog friends. 
In fact, we all like these shoes very much and Robin had to move them out of Lexie’s territory because she didn’t want the rest of us coming in to share the smells.
Robin even takes her dog friend Jack to classes! She says her “dog class” is one of the best hours of her week.
That means that even though no dogs live in our house, Robin is a dog lover as well as a cat lover.
She says she has not invited dogs to live with her because she spends so much time at work that a dog would not have a very good life with her. We cats are a lot better at entertaining ourselves in non-destructive ways. Her love of dogs and lack of a dog in her house motivates her to help more with the rescue dogs. It’s a great way to live!
I agree Chessie, there MUST be some hokeyness to those numbers! Lots of families have both dogs and cats, including mine. I have a dog sister Sophie who our family adopted at 3 months old from the same shelter my angel sister Černy and I adopted our Mom from. I was 5 when we adopted Sophie, a black lab/fox terrier mix, and using my mama cat skills I still had from raising my kits a few years before I helped raise her. She is very smart and knows that cats are served first, and if something is placed in her food bowl that we wish to see first, she must wait until we have decided we are done before she gets to eat. She even waits patiently for her turn at the water bowl and will lay next to her bed on the floor if I am sleeping in it. I understand fully why Robin enjoys her time training rescue dogs, it is very satisfying to watch them learn and wonderful to enjoy the results!
I don’t think Robin should rule out getting a dog even if she doesn’t have the time at home to train and boss one around, all mew kitties in the household are perfectly capable of training and bossing/looking after a dog. I recommend getting a puppy, as the younger they are the easier they are to mold to mewz specifications. MOL!!