Cats are neat.   I’ve owned cats for about 10 years and I’m pretty sure I’m a convertee from the cult of ‘Dog Person’ to ‘Cat Person’.   That is not to say Dogs don’t have their charm, but Cats just have this mysterious air about them.

With a Dog, what you see is what you get.   You feed them, you pet them, they love you.   There is nothing complex about what dogs bring to the table.  Now with cats they seem to have this whole ‘you have to earn my trust’ mentality.

In short, they’re jerks.   And I respect them for it.

My cats are going on 10 years old, and rescue cats.   I had the pleasure of taking off the hands of a negligent household that I shudder to think what would have come of them if I hadn’t taken them in.   One of them is the most affectionate little balls of fur you could ever ask for.   To a fault.   He will knock down the door just to get him some snuggle time.   The other is a hermit that you’re more likely to spot bigfoot than her.  She also only has one eye, so by default she’s awesome.

Throw an eye patch on this guy and you pretty much have a good impression of Maggie.

Like people, cats love you on their terms.  You do not have a free pass for love as you do for Dogs.  Dogs are more like family in the way they seem to unconditionally love you to a degree.   Sure, if you mistreat them outright they will come to despise you, sort of like that ‘one uncle’ at Thanksgiving dinner.   But deep down you love him past his crude humor and lack of tact.

Cat owe you no such courtesies.   If they love you, it is because you’ve earned it.   I think that’s what I like about cats.   They are characters in themselves and develop human-esque personalities because of this innate cynicism.

Now of course some people take this to an extreme and devote their entire human interactions to cats.   But to be fair, it’s easy to see how this can happen.   For someone that has been hurt by people, chased down by people and scarred by people a cat is a nice mid way for dealing with the selfish mindset of another.

With cats it’s give and take.   They aren’t so much your pet, as more of a dependent roommate.   They look at the attention they garner you as a commodity, their rent per say, and they are reimbursing you for food.  Sometimes I wonder if the whole ‘bringing you rodents’ thing applies to other aspects.  Mind you I get pretty happy when my cat brings me a dead mouse, as they are indoor cats.   “I have found and dealt with the intruder.” Rings loud and clear.  Now if only I could train them to put out little pikes in front to warn future infidels.

I brought you this because it matches the color of your eyes.

I have seen my cat look up at me, warm up a hairball, let it loose, then look at me and chirp his merry little yap of a meow.  It’s almost as if he was saying:  “It’s not much.   But this is for you.”

This embodies the cat.  While dogs live to please the person responsible for their well being a cat knows what they have to offer.   It isn’t a clumsy awkward grasp it is a deliberate contract between man and beast.