Basic Bitch

Gets catty

I am not a cat person.

People tend to think that this means I like dogs. But I don’t like dogs. I pretend to like dogs so people don’t think I’m a psychopath. I’ve even managed to fool myself — I’ll keep up the charade when I’m on my own and I see a ‘cute’ dog. I’ll stop and make myself touch it and do baby talk, before I realise no one’s watching. I get out the hand sanitiser and hurry on.

I am happy being mostly vegetarian, to not use products tested on animals, to refuse straws for the sake of the turtles, like any self-respecting snowflake. Just please don’t make me touch your shih-tzu.

So I don’t particularly like dogs. But I am categorically not a cat person. And it’s not because I’m allergic, which I am; I’m also allergic to gherkins, but I’m still passionate about pickles. I just hate cats.

With Bae, my cat problem became a real issue. Initially, he came with a cat. It was a cat of a broken home — his ex-girlfriend had insisted on it, now he was left with it. And so was I. It was a testing couple of years. He really, really loved that dickhead of a cat.

After I won the war and we moved in together, Bae’s former housemate took the cat and moved in with a best frenemy of ours — a guy who had breached bro code by abortively cracking on with Bae’s ex, in the way of incestuous university friendship groups. For his sins, he now shares her one-time misanthropic cat. Poetic justice.

And Bae and I are happy: it’s like the cat never was. But sometimes I see him lingering on an online cat meme for just a second too long. I’ll notice his eyes wandering to the tops of walls and under parked cars, always half hoping for the swish of a tail, or the glint of a yellow eye. He thinks we’ve compromised on getting a dog one day. Because cats are one thing, but only serial killers don’t like dogs, right?