FELINE LOVE

Alfie the Frowning Cat — Winning You Over and Sharing ‘Your Person’

Years of scowls and frowns of consternation, then acceptance

It seems the cat knows how to look in the lens better than I can | Photo by Joe Guay

Oh Alfie, you need to understand, I was raised ‘a dog person.’

There were no cats. No friends had cats. No relatives we visited had cats — not a one. Well, at least not the folks we saw by choice.

My dad didn’t help the matter, as cats were not his cup of tea. How did I know, you ask? The following phrase escaped his lips more than once: “They have a cat… ugh,” and the look on his face conjured an image that he must have just tasted cow poo encrusted with many shards of glass.

These cats, apparently, were not to be enjoyed, not to be trusted.

A screening of Disney’s animated classic Lady and the Tramp certainly didn’t help the cause, the two evil Siamese kitty villains swinging from curtains, knocking over furniture and making life oh so uncomfortable for the heroine pup, Lady.

At age nine, Mom and Dad agreed I could have a dog as a birthday present, so little Patches, my beloved pup, entered our lives. And thus continued the forced non-interactions with cats. Somehow all through high school and college, not a single friend or acquaintance with a cat. I’m…