Cool... I didn't know this forum was hiding on the board!
Add me to the list of folks who live with a dog but are partial to cats. Our Mickey is the first dog either of us has had in years. My family had a poodle when I was a kid, and I had an Irish setter back in the Seventies. I've had room mates with dogs, but we still always seemed to have cats in the house.
When I got married almost five years ago, my husband realized that I missed having a cat in my life. When I'd moved from FL to WA to be with him, I'd left my senior cat Harlequin (
aka Momcat, because she'd been a feral kitten-making machine before deciding to hook up with me, and everyone in the neighborhood just called her "that ol' wild mama cat") with my mother. (I'd already moved her from TN to FL, and she'd
hated the trip. Gave me the cat cold shoulder for almost a year afterwards.... I couldn't do that to her again, and Mama, who'd never been a fan of cats, had fallen hard for her, even warming tuna for her: "But, Carolyn, she doesn't like it out of the refrigerator." LOL) Jamus planned to get me a kitten for my birthday from the shelter, but fate intervened. His oldest daughter -- the girls live with their mom -- had a cat, and, when they moved into an apartment, her mom said the cat had to go. Knowing that the child was worried about the cat, whom she'd had from kittenhood, Jamus asked me, "Hon, would you mind if I got you a 'used' cat instead of a kitten?"
Of course not!
So we took Minnie in. She'd been an indoor/outdoor cat, but stayed out more than in (at least they'd had her spayed,) and she had become all but feral. As we say down south: wilder'n a bessie bug! Jamus told me that, when he'd still been with his ex, he always thought the cat hated him, but, after moving in with us, she soon decided that, while Mama Human does the food and litterbox duties, Daddy Human must have hung the moon. She adores him! Me? Besides being the cat servant, I'm good for pouncing on in bed to demand ear-luvin's. If I play possum, she head-butts me or gently paws at my face until I give in and rub her ears. She knows I'm
always ready to pet her, but she loves playing the game.
She's a funny cat, a sworn hater of dogs, and we -- and the dog -- definitely get along with her on
her terms. Except for her addiction to ear-luvin's, she's less demonstrative than most cats I've known, and I've lived with some pretty stand-offish felines. But when she
does decide she wants petting and attention, there's no escaping her! Not that we want to.... Most of the time, though, she just wants to snooze, preferably in one of her hidey-holes. What amazes us is that when my husband, who's diabetic, is about to have "sugar trouble," Minnie hops up on him and starts making bread on his tum. She knows before he does, and she won't stop until he's feeling better. We call it "kitty CPR." She's getting on in years, now, and she's definitely lost her kittenish figure. We call her the Plumpalotapuss! Here's a little animated gif I made of some of my favorite Minners pics (a couple of them, I'm afraid, were taken with my first digital camera, which was awfully lo-res):