Reykjavík Grapevine - 03.06.2016, Side 20

The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 7 — 2016
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G E T Y O U R D E S I G N E R B R A N D S
T A X F R E E A T K E F L A V I K A I R P O R T
The most characteristic sound of
Reykjavík is neither the desper-
ate noise of drunkards during the
weekend nor the lonely song of the
wind in winter. It is the sound of
cats. Cats meowing, cats wailing, cats
scratching, cats itching, catfights and
catcalls and catlove, cats being catty
and cats being nice, cats all but howl-
ing at the moon every night.
On an island where it routinely
rains cats and dogs, how did one
side win?
How did the
cats take over
Reykjavík?
In part, it has to do with legisla-
tion. In what can only be seen as a
gesture of kindness towards cats
and mailmen, the city of Reykja-
vík decided to ban dogs in 1924.
Why they did so is anyone’s guess,
but this was at the time when they
liked banning stuff, such as alcohol.
The infamous beerban was lifted
in 1989, but the dogban was upheld
in a 1988 referendum, although it
was easy to get exemptions. Ap-
parently, owning a dog has been
legal as of 2012. The law runs to 25
paragraphs and the prospective dog
owner must be of a legal age, get
permission from his neighbours
and have a clean criminal record.
The dog has to be insured, and the
owner take a training course or
submit sworn testimony from two
individuals that he can be entrusted
with the responsibility of owning a
dog. Also, dogs are banned from the
main shopping street, Laugavegur.
The hip cats of Reykjavík strut
down the streets as if they had been
created solely for their existence,
but there have probably been more
famous dogs in Icelandic history
than cats. One of them is Tanni,
the dog of former Prime Minister
and “architect of the collapse” Davíð
Oddsson. The PM liked to tell stories
of his dog, and apparently could be
seen taking him for walks while deep
in conversation. Oddsson claimed
to be talking to himself rather than
the dog, but who knows? Perhaps he
was acting on canine orders when he
privatized the banks.
“The more I learn about people,
the more I like my dog,” said Fred-
erick the Great of Prussia, or Mark
Twain, or Clara Bow (depending on
which meme has just been shared
into your feed). This sounds like a
condemnation of the human race,
but it also shows a love of dogs much
evidenced in Berlin today. If there are
any cats living in the city, they must
all be part of some underground re-
sistance movement. On the streets of
Berlin, the dogs reign supreme. You
see them in the coffee shops and in
the bars. This is a dog town.
So why do these
people like their
dogs so much?
In Russia in the 1990s, when Ana-
toly Chubais was privatising the
economy and putting everyone out
of work, if briefly became popular to
get a dog, name him Anatoly Chu-
bais and then kick the thing mer-
cilessly. This I can understand, but
the German love of dogs seems to go
much deeper.
In Berlin, it is not uncommon
to see a crippled dog trailing be-
hind its master. In Germany dogs
are nursed long after the owner’s
own parents have been put in an old
folk’s home. Even homeless people
have dogs and share with them of
their meagre resources. This works
because German dogs, much like
their owners, tend to be well-be-
haved and quickly admonished for
barking at strangers.
It seems clear that in many cas-
es, getting a dog can improve a per-
son’s life considerably. So is it right
to ban them from a city entirely, as
was done here in Reykjavik? As a
former mailman, I say yes.
Valur is a writer and part-time cat
lover
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Why Cats Are
Better Than Dogs
Words VALUR GUNNARSSON
Nanna Dís
Natsha Nandabhiwat