John Hood offers three rebuttals to my points. All of them are nigh upon feline in their guile.

Point 1, he writes:

1. Intentionality. Sure, dogs may intend more help to humans than cats do. So what? Since when does our team judge actions on the basis of intentions rather than results? That’s just the wrong breed of argument for this discussion.

Ah yes, intentionality: For the utilitarian it is the undesirable and unappetizing crust of morality on the pizza pie of life. Who cares about intent? It’s merely the dividing line between an accident and a murder, a tyranny and a welfare state, theft and borrowing, a hero and a dunce. We are conservatives and therefore care not about such metaphysical concepts. As his own correspondent notes, if utility is the only standard aand intentionality counts for nothing than molds and even the bacteria in your intestine are more morally worthy than both cats and dogs. That’s a fine argument to make, but police departments rarely have dress funerals for Lactobacillus casei — and for good reason.

Point 2:

2. The Dogs of War. Yes, dogs can be trained to help human beings hunt and battle. A good friend of mine used to train K-9s. But, correct me if I’m wrong, no major battle in the history of human warfare has credibly been credited to the efforts of the canine corps. Whereas, I know of at last one major medieval campaign — Genghis Khan’s invasion of the Tangut state of Xi Xia, a major power in western China and Tibet — that was won in large part due to the use of cats. Realizing that his army wasn’t yet prepared to mount effective siegecraft (that would come later with the use of Chinese auxiliaries) the Great Khan took the pivotal fortress of Volohai by convincing its commander that he would withdraw in exchange for a gift of 1,000 cats and 10,000 swallows. The puzzled commander complied, at which point the Mongols tied tufts of cotton wool and twigs to the animals’ tails and set them ablaze. The terrified cats and birds reentered the city and started lots of fires, paving the way for the fort, and later the Tangut state, to fall. Intentional assistance from the critters? No. Effective? Yep.

This is a mere offshoot of point one. Cats are instruments in this tale, not deliberate actors of any kind. The fact that they were cats is entirely meaningless. By this standard, John should be praising the superiority of small pox. Indeed, small pox is even better because it’s hard to get cats to start fires.

Point 3, Hood writes:

The Rodent Question. Dogs will certainly eat rodents. But cats require no training or urging to do so, and are responsible for far more rat removal historically than dogs are. Just because something can be done doesn’t mean it will be, or is the most economical use of resources.

Again, he makes my point for me. Cats do not do what they do to help or please humans, they do what they do out of simple, unthinking, catness. It is the nature of dogs to be of use to men. It is the byproduct of cats that they have some utility. Oh, and when it comes to rat-catching I will put a Jack Russel terrier up against ten cats any day.