La France: Les chats et les chiens

I was talking to a fine new lawyer who is domiciled south of the Mason-Dixon line. We spoke of our interesting friendship with the French. I believe Bill O'Reilly had made some penetrating remark. Well done, Mr. Bill! ( And where, oh, where is Mr. Sluggo when we need him?) Or perhaps it was Mr. Tucker Carlson who seems to be still searching for his lost bowtie. Since both of us have had some experience with cats and dogs, we decided to try to use animal metaphors to describe France and the USA. Well, that was just too simple. I mean, the French are cats and the Americans are dogs. You know how remote cats are. They are indeed inscrutable. They do not enter into our comraderies. They have their own secret sciences and religions. Whereas we might very much expect dogs to gleefully join our worship, cats obviously make pilgrimage to some secret fane and participate in rituals not meant for human eyes. We might expect dogs to study physics and give a high-five all around when they engineer a better water bowl, but cats - we think - would look at our knowledge and say something like: "This species is where we were 2,000 years ago...but for the Prime Directive, we might assist them." Dogs would watch sports on ESPN and debate sports topics. Cats would consider even PBS to be a bit too infra dig.