A Blog About Dogs...and Cats, Too, I Guess

The fact is, I am a cat person right down to my inner guts and core.  I love their independence, their cleanliness, their blatant disregard for everyone around them, their sweet little faces, their fastidiousness, and pretty much everything else about them.  Basically, the cat is everything I wish I could be all at once while still getting people to cater to my every whim and quirk.  My cat can walk across my face at 3 in the morning, insisting on food, and I happily get up to serve.  If any of my children walked across my face at 3 in the morning, for any reason, I would break out the Mommy Monster and let them have it.  It's just the natural order and reasonings of a True Cat Person.  

Dogs are a whole different story for me.  I barely tolerate most of them.  If I encounter a cat in the suburban wild, I will stop in my tracks and attempt to interact with it.  If I encounter a dog, I barely give it a second look.  They're just so damn happy all the time, and I prefer my animals to have a little more moodiness.  A dog will dole out affection for people like a clown handing out candy at a parade.  While this may appeal to the masses, I find it patronizing and trivial.  Anything worth having takes work, and the love of a cat is definitely worth working for.  

When we first got married, I went into a bit of a funk.  I was substitute teaching while Peter finished his last year of law school.  While I hit the jackpot when it came to men, there was still a hole in my life.  That hole turned out to be cat-shaped.  We cajoled our landlord, with the help of his cat-loving wife, into disregarding his "no pets" clause and letting us get a kitty.  We found her at the shelter.  She was 7 months of awesome, and she was ready to come home with us.  We promptly changed her name from Kharn to Alice the Wondercat.  You can do that with cats.  You can't do that with dogs.  Alice has been my constant companion for 10 years, and I can't get enough of her, especially since the only person she loves in our house is me.  

Then we moved to our current home.  My husband, a staunch Dog Person, began his campaign for canine companionship.  It so happened that a friend of ours had a lovely yellow lab she needed to re-home.  She was 2, pre-trained, kind of cute, super friendly, and I was willing to give it a shot.  3 years later, Pearl is a fixture in our family, shedding all over, eating poop like it's candy, smelling terrible, and making everybody smile.  Even me once in a while.  Then Peter got into his head that Pearl needed a friend...

Along came Mahone.  Another re-homed dog, he is a German Short Haired Pointer with a nervous disposition and an inability to sit still.  He has his moments of cuteness, but for the most part, he drives me insane.  The kids adore him.  He naps with Titus.  He chases my cat.  He slips on the laminate floors.  He eats food faster than a cheetah runs.  

And so it came to pass, this True Cat Person became a dog rescuer.  Crazy, smelly dogs.  I am willing to admit, but only to you, that sometimes I love them.  Their incessant cheerfulness can be kind of endearing.  Now that I have a Dyson, cleaning up after them is much easier and kind of enjoyable.  However, my favorite part of the day is putting them in their crates for the night.  When Alice the Wondercat hears the click of the locks, she knows that the house is once again hers, and seeing her pop out from under the bed, hungry for food and affection, brings a calm and peace to my life like nothing else can.