This answer will probably shock some people, since I’m kind of known on Quora for being a cat guy and for doting on my beloved cat, but there was a time when I really, really didn’t like cats.
When I was in high school my friend Dave’s house was one of the main hang-out spots for my group of friends — it was a big house with a large den, and most importantly Dave’s parents didn’t care if we hung out there. We’d get stoned, rip on each other for fun, and play video games on Dreamcast until the wee hours of the morning.
The problem? Dave’s mom was a crazy cat lady. They had 12 cats! Those little motherfuckers were everywhere, underfoot, crawling all over everything, shedding hair, meowing and generally getting in the way no matter where you were in the house.
They all had stupid names too, like Mr. Whiskers, Mr. Snuffles, Princess and Ronald Reagan. (His parents were hardcore, always-watching-Fox News conservatives.) When Dave showed affection to any of the cats we’d mercilessly rip on him.
“Oh Dave, is that your pwecious widdle Pwincess? Widdle Pwincess loves you, Dave! Don’t forget to give some love to Mr. Snuffles!”
(Above: Aoshima, aka Japan’s “cat island,” but it might as well be Dave’s house.)
This was especially a problem for me because I was highly allergic. I had to pop Benadryl just to survive in that house, and more often than not I’d get congested, start sneezing and my eyes would gum up from the dander everywhere.
There were times I had to leave because the allergic reaction was too severe. To put things in context, merely sitting on a couch in Dave’s house could leave you covered with cat hair.
To make matters worse, another one of my friends lived in a house with 10+ cats, led by a massively fat feline named Calvin who ruled the neighborhood with an iron paw and was so rotund he looked like a damn wild boar whenever he snuck up on us at night.
(A cat who very much looks like Calvin the Caloric Conqueror, Caliph of Cake, Prince of Pâté.)
Unlike Dave’s parents, this family didn’t keep up on scooping and their home perpetually smelled of cat shit.
I didn’t hate cats, but I definitely didn’t like them.
They were, I believed, inscrutable and infernal annoyances without personality or intelligence, constantly getting in the way, making me sick and being generally useless. They didn’t listen to anyone or anything, they wouldn’t stay off countertops, and they were always sticking their little faces in our snacks when we had the munchies.
I wondered what kind of lunatic would voluntarily adopt these irritating animals into their home, let alone 12 of them. Twelve!
Then a funny thing happened a few years later. My friend Mike moved in with his girlfriend, and they adopted two cats.
One of them was Cosmo (as in Kramer an incredibly friendly tuxedo who took a liking to me and released rivers of joyful drool, purring like an engine at the slightest bit of affection.
They had leather couches, and you could create entire river systems in the leather, complete with tributaries and estuaries just by petting Cosmo for a few minutes and letting him drool unimpeded. It was hilarious.
(Cosmo would make this cat look like an amateur drooler.)
I began petting him, cautiously at first, and always followed by a vigorous hand-scrubbing with soap and that anti-bacterial crap. I realized I could interact with cats as long as there wasn’t a damn battalion of them shedding and shitting everywhere. I began to look forward to seeing the cat when I visited my friend, and I’d bring diced chicken just for him.
Fast forward a few years. I’d turned 30, I calmed down a lot and my life was no longer just about partying. Some time later I was going through a bit of a rough spot, and I adopted a silver tabby runt, eventually settling on the name Buddy
Tosay I was floored by his personality, his friendliness, his fierce intelligence and his mischievous ways would be an understatement. He wasn’t the inscrutable type of cat I remembered: He became my shadow, my perpetual personal assistant and my best friend.
So why do some people hate cats? In my experience it’s because they don’t really know them. All but the most cold-hearted of humans are susceptible to felines and their adorable, amusing ways.
(“You forgot to tell them how handsome I am. Go on, tell the internet people about my devastating good looks. Then tell them to follow my blog for more photos of me!”)
Image source Google
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