by Luciano D. and Dominic F.

Since the dawn of time, there has been a heated debate; which is better, cats or dogs? The answer seems simple, yet the question alone has caused mental breakdowns and ended friendships. Join us, Luciano and Dominic, as we embark on a mission to settle the debate of the ages.

It would be impossible to ask everyone in the world this question, so instead we asked some Mendocino K-8 seventh and eighth graders. At the time of writing this article, a Google form we wrote has received 29 responses, of which 60.7% agreed that dogs were better than cats. This is not surprising, as it has always seemed that dogs were more favored in general. You know, as they say, “A dog is a man’s best friend.”

There were some interesting responses to say the least, Evelyn says, “Higher beings in the form of simple felines, us humans not being the owners, but the pets. food for thought,”  Taz countered with, “cats are just ATMs that never give you your money back.” As a final rebuttal, Maxx B declares, “Ah, the cat. The perfect being. They stare into your soul, moving your heart towards the cat food cabinet. The purr is hypnotising, forcing you to continue petting their backs.”

In the category of “What would make you change your mind,” 48.1% of people who answered the form said nothing would change their mind, while 11.1% of people said that owning one of that pet would change their mind, and 40.7 people said they would change for 20 dollars.

As I was saying, 40.7% of responders would take 20 dollars to have a different favorite pet. If this was true for all of humanity, meaning 3 billion people would each take 20 dollars to have their favorite pet changed, Elon Musk could easily pay the 60 billion dollars and STILL have 282.9 billion dollars left. In other words, if he wanted to, more than a third of our population could have a star nosed mole rat as their favorite pet. Food for thought.

In the case of ‘Would you like someone less if they did not agree on the best pet,’ 82.8% of responders said they would not like someone else if they did not agree on the best pet, while just 17.2% of people said they would like someone less. According to these responses, if you want a better chance at your new friend liking you, agree on their favorite pet.

Additionally, though you might think that dogs are more popular than cats simply because more people own dogs, this may not be true. 24.1% of people have only a cat, but 24.1% of people also have only a dog. 44.8% of people have both, meaning that there are equal cat owners and dog owners, so our data is not bias to dogs because there are more of them. Instead, our data shows that dogs are truly the most favored pet, at least amongst middle schoolers.