The True Meaning and Purpose of Furniture

I read this delightful article over at www.sfgate.com and thought I'd share it with you all. It's a very interesting and heartwarming piece which many people will agree with and many won't.
"Whenever I walk into my living room, it's apparent to me that furniture must have been invented for animals. I imagine that, long ago, those first proto-dogs who entered our caves to suck the marrow from bones they helped us bring from forest to fire pit, once sated, climbed onto the boulders we arranged for seating, looked down, and then howled in complaint. I'm quite sure they gently removed those furry loincloths from sleeping cave-people and set them in piles in the coziest cave corners.

Thus, I imagine, it was a wolf-dog's need for comfort combined with an early hominid's opposable thumbs that gave rise, eventually, to the invention of the couch.

Give a dog a couch, an overstuffed recliner, a bed, even a padded footstool and you will see a body and furniture locked in an embrace so natural, so symbiotically sensual, that you'll feel obligated to ask permission before ever again putting your own butt to upholstery. Dogs do not simply sit on a chair; rather, they wrap themselves into it, jowled jaw becoming one with the overstuffed arm, chintz pillows rearranged to happily ensconce the canine frame. A dog in a lounge chair is as naturally supported as a newborn baby in the arms of a doting mother, exhausted but happily asleep with her prize warm and safe in her arms.

Back to my living room, for the moment. As a dog reclines blissfully on the folded-up fold-out, his legs dangling somehow both awkward and graceful, his snoring, eventually, disturbs the two cats nesting in the armchair across the room. They wake, stretch, and dig their needle claws into the arms. Slowly, one undulates her body, then faster and faster, finally delivering a bile-wrapped hairball onto the seat. Feeling a bit lighter, the two cats burst from the chair and pounce like wild beasts from table to shelf to chair again, finally landing on the back of the sofa that cradles said sleeping dog.

Tigers now, they stalk down this upholstered jungle tree to attack the massive brute. He awakens, chases. But to no avail. His size and strength are no match for their cunning, and they have retreated to safety: one to a bookcase, hiding in the space made available when the collected works of Mark Twain were knocked to the ground; the other (fatter, slower, but still able to hide) to the cave under the coffee table. A simple beast, this dog, he returns to the couch. Surely this scene will be played out again and again before the day is over.

My living room, it seems, is not my own. It is their habitat. The dogs' for rest, the cats' for play (and for tormenting the dogs, among their favorite games). It is, after all, their home, too, and in this home, it is furniture's true purpose and destiny to provide solace and entertainment for dogs and cats.

So, human, do not complain if your ottoman smells like your companion animal; rather, rejoice that in this otherwise cold and lonely world, they have found each other."

Article by Ken White
Source: www.sfgate.com - read the original article here.

For many pet owners this probably rings true but on the other side of the coin letting our pet, or any animal, get that cosy on our nice new furniture is just something we can't bear. What kind of person are you?