On celebrating eight years as a cat person

My wife and I celebrated eight years of cats this week—we adopted Lizzie and Jane on 9/11/15 and I have been a cat person ever since.

This was a little weird because, before adopting two kittens, I was a dog person. I had my doubts about cats. I had no cats growing up, only dogs. I had a hard time seeing myself as a cat person.

But the facts of our situation were simple enough: 1) we wanted a pet, 2) we lived in a 250-SF Manhattan apartment, and 3) we didn’t want to rush home from happy hours and parties and concerts to “let the dog out” like other people we knew.

So: cats.

And so, too, I found myself becoming a person that younger me could not have imagined: a cat person.

There’s a strange delight in screwing with the expectations of our past selves. You thought I would zig, but here’s the zag. Pets, I know now, are an easy way to zag against our imagined selves.