Cats and Dogs

So the kids are visiting from Atlanta, and they brought their dog with them, which makes for a certain amount of traffic control problems, as our house isn’t really set up for canine inhabitants. In particular, the living room furniture isn’t dog-proof; there’s a fair amount of stuff in our basement that would not take well to being chewed or otherwise played with, and of course we have a rather crotchety old cat who, as far as we can tell, has never spent any time around dogs. So before the arrival of our guests, I went around the corner to the Meijer hypermarket to see if I could find a couple of baby gates…

This did not prove difficult, as the Meijer has an entire section devoted to what Dave Barry calls “baby fixin’s” – everything from clothing to major pieces of indoor-outdoor furniture considerably more elaborate than my first apartment. Included in this inventory were a bewildering array of baby gates, ranging from small pieces of wicker that a healthy gerbil could push over to stainless steel and hardwood contraptions that would stop anyone under 6 feet tall/220 pounds and could be padlocked for added security. What, exactly, these are supposed to stop a baby from doing is a mystery to me; so is one line of baby gates that are so elaborate that the back of the box describes the 9 (yes, NINE!) different models the company produces and explains the features (out of a dozen or so) that different models include…

I’ve seen lines of television sets and home computers with fewer models – and fewer features to choose form. I’ve also seen cheaper television sets than some of these gates; in fact, there’s one in our bedroom right now. Feeling somewhat out of my depth, I went over to the pet section to see if there were any alternatives there. Sure enough, they carried two models of pet gate; a large (six-panel) item that can be used for a quick indoor pen or dog run, and a simple two-panel gate that can be wedged into doorways or other openings without hardware or installation. The smaller model was ideal for my purposes, and I was gratified to see that while it was a few dollars more than the cheapest baby gate, it was also much studier and better made. The equivalent product, on the baby aisle, would have been at least $15 more…

Not that this is surprising, of course. People are much more concerned with their children’s wellbeing than with that of any pet, and since most people will automatically assume that a better product must also be more expensive, it’s easy to get them to pay the extra $15 for a product that says “baby gate” on the package, even if it’s exactly the same as the product marketed in a package marked “pet gate” for structural, material, or engineering purposes. I can’t decide whether this represents a discount for pet owners or a mark-up for people with small children, but I can tell you this much: if you want to make the highest possible profit from your manufacturing activities, you should probably make products oriented toward creatures which actually HAVE money. Or at least, towards the needs of their offspring…

Now if we can just convince the cat to stop attacking the dog…