My husband said those words tonight, the ones I never thought I’d hear a man say to me. “You’re the dog person,” he said.

I denied it, of course. I am a cat person. Really, really I am. I have always lived with cats, from the time I was very tiny and my parents let my sister and me adopt a cat whose given name was Pugsley, but whom we quickly dubbed (I still shudder to think about it) “Fluffy,” until the present day. If J. Alfred Prufrock measured out his life with coffee spoons (go ahead and look it up–I’ll wait), then I can name the intervening years by naming the cats:

Pugsly/Fluffy

Cleo

Smokey

Bilbo (who could say “rowerbazzle” and who was run over by the school bus on our about–depending upon who’s telling the story–my 16th birthday)

Merry

Sascha

Vicious (you hit me with a flower . . .)

Reuben Katso (Katso, me boys, Katso . . .)

Spinner (still walking the earth at the ripe age of 100.6 people years)

Django

Nemo (the heiress apparent)

Cats. I’m telling you, it’s all about the cats. Cats keep away the evil spirits. Keep the mice down. Have the ability to curl up in any-shaped space as needed. Love us and accept our love without letting us get all maudlin about it.

But 6 years ago the unthinkable happened. My husband turned to me and said, without drama or unnecessary preliminaries, “I need a dog again.” How we got from there to here is a long story, a 3 dog tale for a 3 dog night.

Suffice it to say that tonight, when we are worried about a little health problem that Dinah, the queen of the dog roost, might or might not have, he turned to me and said, “Let’s just watch her until tomorrow, and then we’ll call the vet again as needed. You’re tuned in to her, so you’re the one who will know if she’s really sick. After all, you’re [wait for it . . .] the dog person here.”

Me? The dog person? You coulda knocked me over with a Milk Bone.

I’ll keep you (and the vet) posted. In the meantime, stay tuned for the ongoing saga of someone who once thought she was a cat person.

Who knew?