I am a dog person, but what do you know? I adopted a cat in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. To understand how I got here, we should probably start from the beginning.
My parents raised me to be a dog person, though being born in the year of the dog did help. There were a series of notable dogs in my childhood, coming and going, never staying:
An English Cocker Spaniel whose name I could never pronounce because I was still a toddler, keeping my parents company in the early days of their marriage.
A Dalmatian that we couldn’t keep due to situations out of my control, posed next to me in my coordinated outfit, a black dress with white spots.
A Pitbull who was sweet even while biting his tug-and-war rope, often escaping to the grassy fields of a local park when he wasn’t on watch at our family friend’s home.
A Golden Retriever who lived overseas with my aunt, gentle and pampered and well behaved except for that one time he licked my face to wake me up for dinner.
The first dog I could call my own was a fluffy Samoyed-American Eskimo mix named Gaga, not after the pop singer but after a stuffed animal dog I had as a child. In Mandarin, dog is gou, more commonly and affectionately doubled up as gou-gou, but I had trouble pronouncing that sound. From my mispronunciation, the name Gaga was born. His introduction into my life began with my grandparents. Gaga had gotten lost – from where? – and followed them back on a walk home. My grandparents took him in and surprised me around my 5th birthday, thinking it could benefit me to grow up together with a pet. It did. He was a loyal companion from my grade school years through my first year in college. I’ve forgotten our meet cue, but I still remember his daily greetings at the side door of the garage, excitedly barking to welcome us home. I remember waking up the night before Christmas to the sound of him ripping off the wrapping paper on a box of See’s Candies, stopping him just in time. I remember how he’d escape out the front door, with or without a leash, looking for his next adventure. The more we chased after him, the faster he ran, as if we were playing a game. It was frustrating at the time, yet I suppose that was how he found his way to us in the first place.
The very first cat that I remember ever interacting with as a kid, the only cat, was a pretty, longhaired kitty. I cautiously approached her, sticking my hand out and slowly moving step by step. I never got to experience her fluffy coat firsthand. She hissed and scratched my foot instead. How could I ever come to like cats?
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The internet has a lot of striking comparisons, though largely generalized, about dog people and cat people. Cat people may exhibit introversion, value independence and time alone, and prefer quieter environments with more relaxed lifestyles. Dog people may exhibit extroversion, value companionship and playful interaction with others, and have more energy to use up outdoors. They’re opposites.
When I first started dating my now-husband, it was clear to me that while our film tastes had an overlap, our taste in pets did not. We didn’t neatly fit the stereotypes, but I was a dog person and he was a cat person. I would light up when I saw our neighborhood Samoyed; for him, it was the surprisingly friendly Tabby on the front porch or the aloof Ragdoll napping on its cat tree. The most annoying part was that he didn’t actually grow up with a pet cat of his own. He didn’t know what it was like to live with one. It was the time he spent at his Nana’s that grew his affection for the animal, in concept.
Maybe in-concept is where affection starts. I still remember when I discovered Maru, an internet sensation. My partner sent me one of his videos and from there I was hooked. This cat at one point held a Guinness World Record for the most Youtube videos of any individual animal. He has a penchant for boxes of any size and he’s often seen “melting” into plastic containers and glass bowls while his feline family judgmentally looks on. For the first time, I actually thought a cat could be cute.
My growing interest in cats would have stopped there, but the September before the pandemic, my dad was adopted by a family of stray cats. Yes, the cats adopted him.
There lived in the neighborhood an orange tabby and a tortoiseshell who, after months of yowling at each other in the backyards, finally satisfied their curiosity. A litter of kittens was born, collectively cared for by their parents and our neighbors. Many of the kittens found new homes, and eventually all that was left from the original litter was a calico and tortoiseshell. This last pair of kittens followed my dad into the garage, weaving in between his legs as he moved back and forth to refill cat provisions. Until one day, the calico found a path all the way indoors.
My dad thought this turn of events was quite auspicious. Humans go to great lengths to create their own luck, yet here was a lucky cat, making its way into our home. Calico cats have been considered lucky for centuries. They were brought onto ships to protect sailors from bad weather and ghosts along their travels, and today the Japanese Maneki-neko still persists in modern settings. These calico figurines wave their paws at you, beckoning you to enter ramen restaurants and Asian grocery stores alike. My dad gave her a lucky Chinese nickname accordingly. The next summer around Taiwanese Father’s Day, this lucky cat’s dad came back. The orange tabby visited us again, perhaps for a dependable meal, or perhaps to check in on what remained of his progeny. My dad saw it as another lucky sign, a final display of gratitude from one father to another. I saw it as a path forward. Cats were starting to win me over.
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There was just one more step for me to uncover. Could a cat and dog coexist under the same roof? I wanted to know if I could still adopt a dog one day. Would they be compatible? Could you put them together and hope for the best? Could a cat and dog come to enjoy the other’s presence? This line of questioning led me to think of the enneagram personality test.
Enneagrams are a number-based framework that I’ve found to be a helpful tool when thinking about communication and conflict-resolution styles in relationships. There is a specific couple that comes to mind when I think about opposites coming together. The husband is most likely The Peacemaker (#9) and the wife is likely The Challenger (#8). The titles alone might be enough to come up with a stereotyped assessment of their compatibility. As the Challenger faces the issue head on, the Peacemaker retreats in an attempt to restore balance, knowing very well that it’s a fruitless endeavor to argue with someone set in their ways. It’s not worth it. Yet arguing, the act of pushing back, is exactly what the Challenger needs to feel like the other person cares.
I don’t mean to minimize the complexity of the human mind, let alone two, by saying that perhaps all they needed to do was adopt both a dog and a cat. This is clearly an oversimplification, and yet I do wonder – could this have helped? The amount of work it takes to create the space for two seemingly opposite minds to build a relationship with one another is not for the weary hearted. It demands that you change. It requires you to see what you are experiencing, from another person’s point of view. How could a cat and dog co-exist? How would I ever come to like cats? Time and affection, I realized, might be the answer.
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In an attempt to better understand my partner, and let’s face it, have some company during the city-wide shutdown, I submitted an online application to adopt a cat. My application faced rejection after rejection with the spike in interest in pet ownership during the lockdown. One day, I got a call from a private number. Assuming it was spam, I let it go to voicemail. My partner called me minutes afterwards, incredibly confused.
“Did you apply to adopt a cat?”
“Oh…yes.” It finally occurred to me who the private number was. I had put my partner down as a backup contact. “Surprise! I thought we could adopt one for your birthday.”
“You know my apartment doesn't allow pets.”
“Right. But mine does.”
Applying to adopt a cat was, on the surface, a well-meaning but misguided attempt to surprise him with something special. I knew he wanted to adopt his own pet cat one day, and I knew it couldn’t have worked out in his current place. Then why? Was it actually about something else? If loving someone means to know them, then I wanted to learn how to care for what he cared for and reclaim my past poor experience with a particular cat. More practically speaking, my one bedroom apartment was hardly enough space to house a fully grown Bernese Mountain Dog. I still wanted a pet dog but for now, a feline roommate would do.
On the day we went to meet Sherbet, I was incredibly nervous. What if I wasn’t ready? Would this be a mistake? What if I actually still disliked cats? She was surprisingly open and friendly. After playing with her wand toy and Facetiming my partner, we had to decide on the spot if we wanted to take her home. We did.
Ask me again. Am I a dog or cat person? My instinctual response would be to respond with “dog,” but this would no longer be fully accurate. I love walking by dog parks, but when I see a stray cat on my travels or a friend sends me a silly cat video I am reminded of Sherbet waiting for our return.
Is it cheating if I respond and say I’m both? I’m 49% a dog person and 51% cat, because let’s be honest, if I said I was fifty/fifty, I just might get scratched in my sleep tonight.
Waverly Chao-Scott is a Taiwanese American writer, creative producer, and cat owner in San Francisco. Her work has been published in Mochi Magazine and on various blogs. On days when she misses an abstract concept of home, she craves passionfruit green tea and popcorn chicken. You can find her and her cat on IG at @hey.itswaves.
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