Here's something to write your local congressperson about: American advertisers are pushing cats to the fringes of pop culture, starting with a slate of canine-normative Super Bowl commercials. Of the three — three! — major pet commercials, not one will feature a kitty, which might be cause for concern if you're a lunatic or you adopted a legion of cats in the hopes of training them for movies and profiting off of their fame. Americans, it seems, simply prefer dogs because dogs are, well, what is it about a dog? "You can't go wrong with a dog," says cultural anthropologist Robbie "My-Dog-Is-Probably-My-Life-Partner" Blinkoff. "The dogs are idealized versions of ourselves. They aren't dogs — they're us." Except that they're definitely dogs and advertisers probably use them so often for commercials because they're super easy to train. They'll fetch beer, run in happy circles, and even wear shoes — do you know any cats that would stoop to such obsequious antics? To get a cat to cooperate, you pretty much have to corral it like it's some sort of cow or something. They should make a commercial like that...
Dogs star in 2012 Super Bowl ads [USA Today]