unix - Bash printf literal verbatim string

Question

To make my code portable, I try to use printf rather than echo. But then

printf "-dogs-cats"

returns an error. A workaround in the present case is:

printf "-";printf "dogs-cats"

But is there a general, portable command (or an option with printf) that will print an arbitrary string as a literal/verbatim, not try to interpret the string as a format?

I work in BSD Unix (on a Mac), but my objective is code that would work in other Unix flavors as well.

Answer 1

Use a format specification:

printf '%s' "-dogs-cats"