I’m a cat person.
I know some folks are dog people, and some are fish folks, and some people are even hamster people, but me? I like cats. I like kittens and full-grown cats, tabbies and tuxedoes. I like long hair and short hair and I like the no hair too, even if they are a little creepy looking. I just like cats.
(I go back and read that and realize how weird the phrase ‘hamster people’ sounds. I think there is a story in there somewhere, but I don’t know if it’s a weird furry fetish tale, or a horror-shape shifting story about folks who turn into giant hamsters. *shudder*)
I have had a number of cats in my life, from the kittens of my youth to the brats that live with me now. Yes, I said brats. Let’s face facts, shall we? They are ALL brats. Spoiled, ruined, wastes of furry lives, lounging around growing ever more rotund and lavished with treats and fawned after as if they were the centers of the universe. If your cats do not fall into these specs than you either have exclusively outside cats (which are a bred unto themselves) or you are fooling yourself.
I have nothing against dogs. I have done dogs before.
Umm….
That didn’t come out quite right. Let me try that again.
I have kept dogs before, but I just don’t enjoy them the same way I enjoy cats. I think, for the most part, it’s the overwhelming need for constant attention that put me off dogs. A dog is like a needy friend, who has to have your steady reassurance that you like them or they get depressed.
“Do you like me?” asks Bones, the 100-pound super affectionate Rottweiler.
“Yes, I like you,” says Tonia.
“But you like me?” she asks again, while pressing her huge paws into my tender flesh.
“Yes, now get off of me.”
“But you like me, right?” she asks again as she shifts her entire one hundred pound rump into my lap.
“YES! Get the fuck off of me!”
I have kept small dogs and big dogs and when all is said and done I just don’t care for either. I have been known to say I like dogs the way I like kids … I like other peoples’ dogs. (I also interchange this with kids as the main subject. For some reason this pisses people off.)
Dogs are needy, nervous, overly affectionate bundles of slobber and hair and while they are lovely I just don’t have the time dogs need.
But cats?
Cats are aloof and carefree and just snobbish enough to make me feel special when they deign themselves to seek my attention. I think that’s the real difference between cat and dog people. Dog people like the sort of ‘on tap’ affection that canines are known for. That “here boy!” scampering across the tiles in a skittering excitement kind of love that never fails to please.
But cat folks are a weird lot.
They spend so much money and time just for that single, brief moment when their pet--the one that is being kept and kept up--finally finds the time in their busy kitten schedule of laying about and eating and more laying about to actually stop what they are doing and bump their face against yours. In that moment, in that blessed second of contact, a cat owner achieves a type of nirvana. You know that all is well, that all is good. That yes, your cat loves you. (Just in case you were wondering.) And then the cat wanders off and with a flick of the tail they tell you to carry on, as you were soldier. I am done with you until I can find another five seconds to make you feel important.
Yup, I’m a cat person.