DON'T DATE GUYS WITHOUT PETS...

     I've been off and (mostly) on dating sites since 2011. Since it takes me a while to even get a date, I go through a lot of profiles and start picking up on their nuances. One off-hand observation I've made was that a lot of women on Plenty of Fish were dog owners and I wondered if, in contradiction to the "Crazy Cat Lady Hypothesis", dog ownership meant a woman was more likely to be single.

     Now because I'm me, I wanted some numbers to back up my claim before making a silly status update on Facebook about it. Yes, I'm that weird. I will spend hours poring over random profiles of women for the sole purpose of making sure my bad jokes have at least some semi-solid backing to them.

     What I found surprised me. But first, while I'm having trouble pinning down exact numbers, The Humane Society of the United States says that 62% of American households have at least one pet (of any kind) and the American Veterinary Medical Association states 36.5% of U.S. households have dogs and 30.4% have cats. Since that combined total is greater than 62%, I'll take it there's some overlap there.

     My idea was to go through random public profiles of women (ones you can see without signing into Plenty of Fish and OKCupid) and see whether I would reach 100 dog owners or 100 cat owners first.

     It took a while, but after going through 313 female Plenty of Fish profiles, I got the following results:

Dog owners: 100

Cat owners: 45

Owned both: 12

Owned other kinds of pets: 12

Owned no pets: 144

     So dog owners reached 100 first, but as you can see, my off-hand observation was correct: there were more dog owners represented than cat owners and by a large margin too. The results should skew around 1/3 dog, 1/3 cat, and 1/3 no pets but dogs and petless are overrepresented by a lot.
     Continuing, I did the same thing for the men. Even though I'm prohibited from owning a pet in this apartment (much to my lonely chagrin), I counted myself as a cat owner because I would surely be one. I then continued with random male profiles with the object, like with the women, of reaching 100 dog or cat owners before quitting.

     However, I had to quit because petless men ridiculously outnumbered the pet owners. I quit searching after I hit 200 petless men. Of the 283 male profiles viewed, these were my results:

Dog owners: 47

Cat owners: 21

Owned both: 5

Owned other kinds of pets: 10

Owned no pets: 200

     So, despite the huge overrepresentation of petless men, dog owners still outnumbered cat owners by over 2 to 1.

     I then moved on to OKCupid to see what would come up. For both sexes, I reached the quit point of 200 petless. OKCupid users appear to be less likely overall to have pets. OKCupid also has an option for liking or disliking animals. For the sake of this experiment, I considered the liking/disliking of animals to be the same as having no pets. Personally I like dogs, but I really would never consider owning one (even though miniature dachshunds are freaking adorable...and cat-sized). No, the user had to actually HAVE a dog/cat for it to count.

     For women, I went through a total of 295 profiles and got the following results:

Dog owners: 59

Cat owners: 29

Owned both: 7

Owned no pets or only liked those animals: 200

    Again, besides the huge petless contingent, dogs ownership outnumbered cat ownership by just over 2 to 1.
    For men, I went though a total of 252 profiles and got these results:

Dog owners: 25

Cat owners: 19

Owned both: 4

Owned no pets or only liked those animals: 204

     Only on OKCupid did male pet ownership appear to correlate with national statistics though I wonder if it would've continued the patterns already shown had I pressed on to reach 100 dog or cat owners. I just was not interested in spending that many hours to get to that number.

My hasty conclusions?

     Single women and men who own cats are underrepresented on dating sites meaning they are less likely to be single and therefore are naturally more eligible bachelors and bachelorettes. Despite the negative stigma attached to men who own cats and that of a girl being/becoming a crazy cat lady, it seems that cat owners are more likely to find lasting love.
      Why this might be, you are welcome to speculate on but keep in mind that this survey of mine is in no way scientific. No attempts were made to control for various factors nor can any real conclusions be drawn from this data set. This must ultimately be considered tongue-in-cheek though I welcome anyone who is interested to pick up this baton and seek actual evidence for or against this hypothesis.

      I also wonder what personality traits women who own dogs might have in common that increase the likelihood of their singledom? And speaking of factors, the kinds of dogs were not controlled for either. I don't know if these women tend to own small, mid-sized, or large dogs or how those three groups are represented. Maybe large dog owners do well in love and small dog owners do poorly? Something else to research for your college thesis :-P

     The preliminary conclusion I would draw though is if you're looking for a quality woman, date one who owns at least one cat, consider avoiding dog owners, and definitely avoid the petless.

     When it comes to men, however, the sheer overrepresentation of the petless is astounding. I don't even know what to say about that except...

      LADIES, DO NOT DATE A GUY WHO DOESN'T OWN A PET...any pet, I don't care if it's a fucking goldfish. Just make sure he's made the choice to care for another lifeform. Clearly a man who is not willing to take care of a cat, dog, bird, fish, ferret, iguana, mouse, hamster, salamander, snake, horse, guinea pig, rat, raccoon, sugar glider, squirrel, turtle, chicken, gerbil, pot-bellied pig, or even an ant farm is not going to be willing to take care of you. He'll only be looking out for himself (and his dick).
      Fuck all other criteria like how good a job he has, whether or not he lives at home, whether or not he has a car, how tall he is, how charming, how much hair he has, whether or not he is good with money, whether or not he takes shirtless mirror pics of himself, etc. Pet ownership...that's the key, I'm thinking, to finding a quality man.