Can a dog person enjoy owning a cat?

I’m a dog person.

I love the slobbering, barking, tail wagging bundles of fur.

Growing up, it was all I ever knew. There was always a dog in the house. My mother loves cocker spaniels. I barely remember Xoc, a black female with the personality of stuffy old royalty, and still miss Brandy, the too-smart-for-her-own-good blonde.

When she gets the chance, my mother lights up at the opportunity to show the picture of me as a young child with a Band-Aid on my nose, holding a toy rabbit, unhappy. She relishes telling people how I bit the dog first on the ear and how fair it was I was bitten in return.

Mothers. What can you do?

Despite the bite-for-bite affair, I grew up loving dogs. I rarely met a dog I didn’t like.

When I met my wife, Chandra owned a Siamese cat appropriately named Whiner. The cat was so needy it would meow endlessly until someone would give it attention. Good attention, bad attention, it didn’t matter.

I believe the cat was so needy it tried to commit suicide when left alone for a three day weekend.

Chandra’s dad was checking her apartment when he heard a lot of clunking sounds in her bedroom. He found the fur ball gasping for air with an alarm clock cord wrapped tightly around its neck. She says freak accident. I say a pathetic cry for attention.

Last year, we bought a house in Moses Lake. After a few months of settling into our new home, the “we need a pet” response was activated. The debate began.

I wanted a dog. A pet that is loyal, attentive and able to fetch balls or sticks. Either would work. I’m not picky.

She wanted a cat. A hair ball spitting, furniture wrecking, stubborn animal who refuses to be trained.

This was an easy argument.

I lost.

The final crucial element, to my caving in and following her to the Outreach Animal shelter, was so simple it astounded me and crushed my resistance. I wanted to make my wife happy. To do this, I would have to live with cats.

Yes, plural. Cats.

Seems she has her cat and we needed a second to act as her cat’s pet — to keep it company.

Joy. Twice the “fun.”

Months have passed and I have to admit an awful truth: Yes, I have come to like them.

Her cat is a Pixie Bob and quite affectionate. It will headbutt you as a sign it likes you. She is the grand dame of the house and quite fussy. She’s a typical cat.

The other cat became mine. She’s black with green eyes and tends to purr a lot when I’m near. Her name is Black Purrl. Yes, after the movie pirate ship.

She seems to know exactly when I have time to pet her. Purrl will follow me from room to room … like a dog. She will fetch bottle caps and the little rings from milk jugs. For the most part she acts like a dog and it has endeared her to me.

When I try to train her, in such tasks as staying off the kitchen counter, she will sit and watch me with her eyes widened. This is the point I become aware of how much of a cat she is. The look is either brain dead or a “Who, me?” gaze.

Still, she does fetch and that’s enough for me.

Bill Stevenson is the managing editor for the Columbia Basin Herald. One of his friends fainted when he heard Bill owns and even likes a cat.