Cats vs. Dogs: Who Talks More? Plus Summer Pet Safety Tips Every Owner Needs
On this fun and informative episode of Animal Party, Deb Wolfe shares valuable summertime pet safety tips after her adventures on beautiful Vancouver Island. From fireworks and crowded festivals to dog-friendly beaches, Deb explains how to keep your pets safe during busy summer outings and reveals the biggest mistakes many pet owners unknowingly make. Plus, cat lovers won't want to miss a fascinating look at feline communication as Deb uncovers the surprising science behind cat vocalizations—including why cats meow to humans but rarely to each other, and whether cats or dogs actually have the larger "vocabulary." Filled with practical advice, entertaining travel stories, and a few memorable encounters with pets along the way, this episode is packed with information every pet parent can use.
See some of the pets of Victoria at https://www.facebook.com/debwolfepetexpert/ What’s the difference between a bad pet owner and a good one in a crowd or at the beach? You can Send your pet problems to deb@petliferadio.com
Listen to Episode #275 Now:
Transcript:
Hello, you're listening to Animal Party Pet Life Radio. So you're listening to me, Deb Wolfee. And I was gonna talk about wolves today, because I did a show on wolves and I didn't finish the topic.
I really didn't, didn't do it justice. So I wanted to come back and do it again. But I don't feel like doing that today.
So I'm going to do that on a future show. So if you heard the wolf show and you thought, Oh, I'd really like to know more about that. What was going on with the kill of wolves and the protest against them? And what are the differences between wolves and dogs and their bite strength and their attitudes, their lifespan, anything like that.
That's the next show. But not today. Not today, cat people.
All the cat people are going, Oh, well, thank God, because we're not interested in wolves. We're interested in cats. Who do you think makes more vocalizations? Which species? Don't look it up.
Don't cheat. If you cheat, you're just cheating yourself. We all know Google knows.
But do you know? Think about it. Which animal is capable of more different types of vocalizations? Is it your cat? Or is it your dog? Well, which is it? I mean, there's a lot of noises out there, right? Lots of noises. OK, I can read a lot of them.
I can understand a lot of them. That last one was chuffing. Sounds like laughter or it almost sounds like a dog touching a sneeze.
It's sort of a huff, huff, huff sound that dogs make. And we call it chuffing. And it's a happy sound they make when they're just very, very content.
With what's going on, usually something active, like they know they're about to go for a walk or their favorite person just came home or something like that. So what do you think it is? That is our riddle of the day. Which animal can make more noises, more different than scientists can measure, different types of vocalizations? So this is about anatomy and capability.
Which one? Now, cats don't normally meow at each other. You hardly ever hear that. What you hear, cats talking to each other.
You often hear the mama cat talking to the babies. And what she does is more of a sort of a chirp sound. I don't know if you can hear that.
It's in the back of the throat. It's very odd and it's peculiar. And it's only she only does that to her babies.
And then they come running. So that's kind of an interesting fact there. The cats don't meow to each other.
They meow to us because we've taught them that. Strange, hey? What animals can do to manipulate us, learn our ways and figure things out. Like the dog who begs and knows he's going to get something because he just knows how to convince you.
He has to have that treat. Yeah, they know us. They do.
All right. We're going to go to break. And I just wanted before we go to break, talk about missing cats and dogs.
Because yes, it was July 4th. And it's pretty predictable. July 4th.
I don't want to be saying this again in Halloween. July 4th, lots of fireworks, lots of loud noises, costumes, people acting weird, high traffic, but especially the fireworks. So record numbers of pets were lost on July 4th this year.
So if you know you're going to an event that's really chaotic and busy. And I was at three in one day this weekend. And I'm going to tell you about that after the break.
And I did see dogs there. Didn't see cats there, which I was relieved about. But you got to know your pet and know where to take it.
If you're going to take your pet to one of these places where there's a parade or a get together or a festival or fireworks, barbecue, tailgate party, any of these things, the dog should be, first of all, vaccinated, healthy, no problems. And then on top of all that, it should have a fitting collar that does not allow for it to shrink out of it, escape it, shrug out of it, get out of it if it sees a squirrel. Or here's a firework, go bang, right? So good leash, no more than three feet or a meter.
You don't want a leash that's like a yard. You don't want a leash that's flexing and tangling people and driving people crazy. You don't want the dog roaming in the crowd.
That's not the right message to send. So you need to be smart about all this. And definitely microchip tattoo ID tags.
If you don't want to do all that, leave your dog at home, please. Because we don't need it in the shelters right now with everybody else's. Okay, we're going to go to break.
And I'm going to come back and talk about some of those events I went to and the wonderful dogs and cats, actually, of Vancouver Island on Animal Party, Pet Life Radio. Stay tuned. This is Deb Wolfee.
Hello, we're back on Animal Party on Pet Life Radio. And I went on a little vacation, which I don't normally do with all these puppies, nine golden doodle puppies, almost ready for adoption. And their mama, of course, their papa and two other dogs.
And then all the kennel residents. I hardly ever go away. But my daughter was nice enough to stay and look after everybody for old time's sake.
And she's perfectly capable. So that was great. I went away, went to a wedding, got to see a castle.
It was a magical weekend on Vancouver Island. And got to get a good look at Victoria and Sooke nearby and travel through beaches and parks. And it just happened to be right around July 1st for us, which is Canada Day and a big Canada game in FIFA on Saturday.
So that was a big gathering and everybody wearing the Canada colors to watch the game and root for their team. So that was going on. And then, I didn't know this, but we happened to be in the right place at the right time to catch Caravana, a big Caribbean parade with costumes and dancers and dogs.
Yep, yep, I'm getting to that. And then at the, what else did we do? What else did we do? Well, the next day we went to a beach, a dog friendly beach. So you're going to hear all about it.
And what is there to do on Vancouver Island if you bring your dog? Well, as it turns out, lots. Now, I don't tend to recommend bringing dogs on vacation unless you research it all the way. And you're sure there's nothing you want to do your dog can't do.
So, for example, if you're going to a really hot place and you don't want to eat fast food and stay in the hotel room with your dog, you've got to really think about it. Where's it going to be? It can't just hang out in the car. It can't hang out in the hotel without you unless it's crate trained and quiet, right? And the hotel is air conditioned.
So you've got to really think this through. Camping with a dog, same thing. It's OK if you're camping the whole time and the campsite allows it and your dog is properly trained not to chase the wildlife or will be OK on leash the whole time, which is what they're supposed to be.
And you have to provide water and shade. There's a lot to it. So it might be easier to leave your dog at home.
But for locals, I saw a few locals at the beach. And let's talk about that first because, you know, I give the award out. Every time I go to the beach, I have an award for best dog at the beach if there is one and worst dog at the beach if there is one.
And yet we had our worst dog at the beach. Now, it wasn't the dog's fault. The dog wasn't actually bad in any way.
The dog was a good dog. It was the person who brought the dog to the beach. The person brought this little white dog, long bellied terrier, much shaggy kind of thing, medium age, panting like crazy the entire time, brought this dog to the beach.
And yes, she did have water for it. Good. And she did have a blanket for it.
Excellent. But she did not have shade for it. There was shade all around the outside of the beach area.
But she did not choose to sit where she could be in sun and the dog could be in shade. Instead, she expected the dog to bask in the sunshine on a 80 degree, 82 degree day with no breeze, very limited breeze and not taking it swimming very much at all. Only once and only halfway.
So the dog was hot. And because she decided to sit with her group quite near to me, I was unfortunately listening to her tell everyone over and over again about the dog's anxiety problems. Now we get into another faux pas of mine.
But the dog was not actually that anxious. To me, it seemed hot. It was panting and panting and panting.
That's about it. But she kept telling everyone how anxious the dog is and how it's a good thing she gave it its meds this morning because now it can come to the beach. Hasn't been to the beach in a long time.
And I'm just thinking this poor dog, if it really is anxious and needs meds to go to the beach, why aren't you at least making it comfortable when it's here? Give it some shade. And why are you doing all that? She also revealed in her conversation that it's not her dog. She kept saying, your mommy will be back today or your mommy will be back tomorrow.
She changed the story as if the dog doesn't know the difference. And yes, definitely a winner. We have our worst dog owner at the beach winner.
The dog also, I noticed, was on a flexi leash and did walk on other people's blankets, which I don't like. If you're bringing your dog to the beach, don't let it get sand on everybody's blankets. Don't let it steal their food.
Don't let it beg off them. Don't let it knock their kids over. Make sure your dog's really, really well behaved so people let dogs back again, right? Okay, let's go to another break and we'll talk about some well-behaved animals, including a cat in Victoria on Animal Party Pet Life Radio.
Stay tuned. Oh, and hey, who makes more vocalizations, dogs or cats? What do you think? We'll tell you after the break on Animal Party. Hello, we're back on Animal Party on Pet Life Radio.
And if you want to see some of these dogs of Victoria, I took random photos of dogs I saw in different places and I'll be posting them at Deb Wolfe Pet Expert on Facebook. You get a kind of idea of the crowd scene. So let me tell you about the FIFA thing.
We were looking for the FIFA thing. We wanted to see the game and we wanted to see it with a bunch of people. And so we walked around downtown and Gemini and Siri were directing us to wrong places.
And finally, we found the sea of people dressed like us for the game. Okay, great. But all the seats are taken.
All the good viewing spots are taken. So you have to make a choice. You can be somewhere else and like a bar or a restaurant, go inside and watch the game.
Or you could be in the crowd and either watch it on your phone or do what I did, which is just watch the crowd. When they get worried, you know that the other team has it in your end. When people jump up and down, oh, yay, it's a good thing.
Okay, so do that. So I was crowd watching. And I saw so many dogs.
I saw one man, which you'll see in my photos. If you go to Dubwolf Pet Expert on Facebook, you'll see. I saw one man with a Basset cross and another dog.
And I knew right away it was a Basset cross from the legs. I went up and said, is that a Basset cross? And he's like, of course it is. We had a lovely conversation.
Now that was a guy who was sensible. He was in the thick of the crowd, but sitting off to the side and where his dogs could be in shade and away from feet. Okay, I saw a few other things.
I saw somebody else with a cat on the ground with one of those support jackets that says this is a support animal. And the cat was on a leash, but it was on the ground. And it's small.
And it can so easily get stepped on. And the cat did not look very comfortable. So I didn't like that.
That I did not like. If your animal really is a support animal, and I suspect this was from the way it was handling the crowd, you need to give it safety at all times. You need some other solution.
If you needed support emotionally, then you need to come up with a harness or some other way to carry it through a crowd. That wasn't good. Okay, so one more example was this little shaky dog.
Oh, the shaky dogs. I always worry about the shaky dogs. Tiny, tiny, tiny shaky dog in the middle of all this FIFA crowd.
If anybody steps on it, it's going to break a shoulder, a leg, a hip. It's not even 10 pounds, right? It's smaller than a little puppy. It's smaller than a cat, smaller than a cat.
And the guy is walking it around on a flexi leash. So it doesn't even know where it is. And you can see this dog is, it's like a dashing cross of some kind.
And it's sort of looking up, looking up, looking up, looking up in fear of its life that it's going to get stepped on by maybe someone who's had too much to drink and doesn't even know they've now stepped on this dog. It is just so unsafe. So pick up your dogs if they're little and you're in a big, big, big crowd.
And better yet, don't go in the big thick of the crowd. Stay on the outside like that smart dog owner did. Okay, you're going to see pictures of all of this on devwolf, that expert on Facebook.
And when you go to the beach, bring water, bring a bowl, bring a blanket and bring shade for the dog. No dog would choose to be out in the sun all day. Some of them like to suntan.
Some of them like the heat. There's certain breeds who do. And they'll sort of bask in the sun for an hour or half an hour.
But then they know they need shade and they don't usually choose it in the middle of the day in a hot place. And they would choose to swim or be in the shade instead, if given the option. I mean, she had the flexi leash anyway.
It could have been an option, but it wasn't an option. So always give your dog the option of shade wherever you are. I don't think people realize how often they're giving their dogs heat stroke and not even realizing it.
Like that dog definitely got heat stroke at the beach. And there's no reason for that. We don't need that.
You wear a hat. You go in the shade when you're really, really hot. So they should too.
Okay. So let's talk about these cats and dog vocalizations. Now, when I first heard this, I thought that can't be right.
It can't be right. Because when I'm with cats, I don't hear many vocalizations. Not many different ones.
But when I'm with dogs, I hear so many different sounds. They're communicating with each other and with me. And even now that I've taught them to mushroom forage, there are new sounds they're developing to tell me where the mushrooms are.
You know, they're teaching me new sounds. So science says, I hate to tell you dog people, but science says cats are capable physically, anatomically, and scientifically proven to be able to, and indeed do make 100, 100 different vocalizations. Whereas dogs, I don't know.
I don't even want to tell you this because I think it's untrue. But okay. Science says dogs make 10.
So when I delve deeper and said that can't be right. What about this? What about that? And I named all these different named labeled sounds dogs make. The scientific explanation of those sounds I'm talking about are that they are made anatomically in the same way.
So basically the dogs combining sounds. So a howl and a bark combined or a growl and a grunt combined. And that's why I hear so many variations.
But they are really only variations or combinations of 10 vocalizations. Whereas cats apparently can make 100. So during this show, we have been visited by, well, at first it was Zena.
And I had to take her off my studio soundboard network area three times before she gave up. And now as the show ends, we have Ming Ming. So clearly I forgot to shut the door of the studio.
And they seem to just love to come in here when I'm on the air. I think they want to send their message out to everybody at Animal Party and Pet Life Radio. From me, Deb Wolfee, Ming Ming, Zena and Pet Life Radio.
Be good, to your animals.
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