You see that, right? Cats make up 22.9 percent of the pet population, compared to a mere 20.7 percent for dogs. Hah! In your face, dogs!
Now, you may notice that cats are not the overall leaders in population; freshwater fish top us with 40 percent. However, can’t we agree that this is simply a design flaw in this survey? Freshwater fish should not be classified as “pets”—they’re more accurately thought of as kitty treats.
Speaking of which, the APPA survey also looked at the relative expenses of cat and dog ownership. Once again, we see some great news for cats here. But instead of using a pie chart this time, we can see the results more clearly with a bar chart that displays average cat and dog expenses side by side. Dog expenses are shown in red, cat expenses in blue: