The dog v cat debate rages on in our house. I want to get a dog, everyone else wants a cat. Accordingly, I’ve gone underhand in my tactics: oh, we seem to be passing C and N’s house, I say, shall we just see if they’re in? They are! And they’ve got a new puppy, I’d completely forgotten. Oh my god, how cute is that? Do you want to stroke him?
They pet him and say he’s adorable, leaving me hopeful … but they’d still prefer a cat, arrggh.
Well, now I’ve got science on my side, via Trust Me, I’m a Vet (BBC2). There are a lot of facts and figures in this programme: for example, that we Brits have a staggering 50m pets (oi, I’ll decide whether to be staggered or not, I hate it when they do that). And we spend £40bn a year on their health. A colossal £3bn (what, as opposed to paltry £3bn?) of that is on pet food.
But one stat especially grabbed my attention. Actually, two. One in five cats have fleas. For dogs, the figure is one in 10. Half as likely to have fleas – that’s enough, isn’t it, end of argument?
OK, you can easily treat the fleas on your cat. But only a very uncolossal 5% of the fleas actually live on the animal – the vast majority are around the house. And the best treatment, an aerosol spray that contains permethrin and costs £16 a can, may wipe out a whopping 95% of them, but that’s in a laboratory experiment, in little cones. I imagine fleas are much harder to kill in carpets and sofas. Plus, even if you manage to wipe most of them out, they can quickly breed and reach a staggering number again.
Oh, then there’s gum disease, which 80% of cats and dogs have (although cats are less likely to let you brush their teeth). There has also been a shocking five-fold increase in cat diabetes in the past 20 years, caused not by too much food and not enough exercise, as you might expect, but by brain tumours.
So, kids, just to recap. We could get a cat that may suffer all number of ailments (all of which will cost Daddy a colossal £40 squillion), as well as bringing parasitic insects into the house that will drink not just its blood but yours as well. Or we could get a puppy, like this one – aww, another stroke?
For now, though, we don’t have anything. And actually, this programme doesn’t really speak to us. Even so, TMIAV is more objective and balanced than, say, Channel 4’s The Supervet, which is basically just an opportunity for one vet, Dr Noel Fitzpatrick, to show off how super he is, saving the lives of animals and making the lives of their owners so much better.
By comparison, TMIAV is based at some of the UK’s top vet schools (this week at the Royal Veterinary College in London). Steve Leonard and his expert team of animal doctors bring us the latest research and conduct their own experiments, too – it’s thorough and scientific. And, if you did have a dog and you were wondering whether it would get more of the minerals it requires from wet or dry food, the show would be very useful (it would be even more useful if it said which brands it was testing). But you wouldn’t read a Which? report on something that is not relevant to you. And if you haven’t (yet) got your dog, this is a little … well, dry. Rich in minerals, maybe, but lacking in flavour. Could do with a tad more personality and sentimentality, perhaps; dare I say it, a touch of The Supervet. Or, from the non-animal world, 24 Hours in A&E, which has just the right balance of procedure and personal story.
I’m not even getting to know any of the animals. Such as Fang, doing the dental test. A border terrier, possibly? Definitely cute. Hey boys, come and look at Fang. What, you prefer Albi, the tabby? Albi’s got fleas.
Elsewhere, Britain’s Nuclear Bomb: The Inside Story (BBC4) – about the project that culminated in this country’s explosion of a megaton hydrogen bomb over Malden Island in the Pacific in 1957 – got the science/story mix just right.
I may not have entirely understood the workings of the Cockroft-Walton voltage multiplier. But I very much enjoyed the old boys reminiscing about the time a bomb “came loose over Dorking” and had to be dumped over the Thames estuary, where “the splash nearly drowned a couple of sailors who happened to be nearby”. Hahaha. Lovely. Until you remember what it was all about.
