I love dogs, and some of them are intelligent. They communicate way better than cats too, and make a big fuss out of you. Then again, I don't identify with most autistics' need for so much space, only when I'm stressed.
Actually I have had many dogs. While they often do the stupidest things, like when one puppy I was trying to "house train" to shit and piss outside, figured that the short answer was to just eat his shit and it was gone.
Problem was he often through up his shit after eating it to destroy the evidence.
Yes, dogs CAN be kind of stupid in behavior, but I have never met one after owning hundreds (I am old and used to have a property that allowed me to keep a dozen dogs in an area where one of them was killed by marauding packs of feral dogs an coyotes every week or so, rough place) I can tell you that every dog I have ever seen was pack oriented and territorial, took care of lesser pack members, made a point of keeping its grounds safe for all the pack.
I have seen them sacrifice themselves to help and protect the pack males and females alike. I know that, as intelligent as they may be, they are not sentient but if sacrificing oneself to the benefit of others does not represent some degree of intelligence, then maybe we can not agree, here.
You sound to me like someone who has only lived with a few house kept dogs. I have lived with many and I have only seen one or two who were not about as smart as the others. Identifying with a dog, personally, will help to allow you to understand the intelligence of dogs.
Cats? I have not owned hundreds like all the dogs, but I have owned dozens and many who lived in peace with the packs of dogs I used to keep. Many were not so social and succumbed to the dogs after ripping them to sheds around the face and neck (cats know what to do, but a couple of hundred pound dogs can beat up a twenty pound cat - one on one, often the cat wins and gets away to fight another day - two or three against one, sorry kitty. As I said, rough place).
The last two cats we have had the privilege of living with, one was my wife's cat, plain and simple, he had little to do with me unless it was food time or she was gone and he wanted to nuzzle or get close - he would "use" me for his human time when absolutely necessary.
The cat we now house has always been "my cat." I allowed her to choose me out of a litter of eight common grey tabby house cats, rescued and cared for by a good Samaritan who found an abandoned litter once construction started near where he lived.
I am talking about finding her as a barely (a bit too young actually) milk weened infant. She chose ME! And yet now after nine years, after her making the decision that I was "TeH GuY" when she was a tiny infantile kitten, she still claims me as the "meaning of life" to her. She mainly identifies with me and me alone and becomes quite jealous if I do much with our dog.
Ever seen a doggie come running to the door to greet its "master?" My cat does that with me every time I return home, even if I have only been gone for a few minutes. I have kept a lot of cats, but this is one that I adopted at the earliest age ever for me.
To see her reach such a mature age (cats age about the same as dogs = first year, maturity or about fourteen years compared to human lives then seven for every one year of ours thereafter. So at her age, she is about my age now, in her sixties, cat years) and still keep her promise to be mine and only mine. That feels really good and quite amazing!
This part I do not understand:
Then again, I don't identify with most autistics' need for so much space, only when I'm stressed.
Can you help to understand what this means. I ALWAYS want to keep space around me. When stressed, I do not want any contact at all, except for my sweet wife or one of my very intelligent animals.
