Pet Talk: Is it better to adopt a male or female cat?

DEAR PET TALK: Which is better to adopt, a tomcat or a queen cat (male or female)?

— Crazy About Felines

DEAR CRAZY ABOUT FELINES: For folks who love cats, this is a rich topic for discussion, and this question prompted a variety of responses, the majority of which averred that male cats were preferred.

Reasons for this choice ranged from: “more loving, true sense of humor, affectionate, lovey-dovey, cuddly,” and so on. Females were described as “very assertive, great huntresses, more standoffish, talking, looking for attention.”

However, plenty of respondents noted that their female cats could be very affectionate intelligent and playful — attributes any cat owner would love to see in their feline!

And here is where I propose another consideration: number of cats in household.

Long, long ago, before the internet, but after push-button phones, I grew up in Lunenburg. Our family started with one male cat, but by the time my brother Hal and I were in kindergarten and second grade, our mother consented to adding a pair of kittens (October, a female, and Sam, a male) to the mix. My mom realized she needed a kitten of her own, and since there were farms aplenty, we soon had four cats when we added Nonsense, another female.

With four cats, the word got out, and before long, our relatives in Fitchburg were telling us about stray cats who needed homes. Next came Henry, Ashley and Nicodemus, all males. Low and behold, the spraying began. So off to Dr. Fitzgerald, to get the males fixed, but of course both October and Nonsense had had a litter of kittens, and didn’t get fixed right away.

Before long, we didn’t have “Millions of Cats” as Wanda Gag wrote about in her book from 1928, but we had plenty — so many that a couple of cats decided to move in with neighbors — who were fine with their new arrivals.

By the mid-’70s, we were early adopters of the “fix all your cats” program, but the strays kept coming.

We averaged six cats, occasionally eight or more, since my mother could never resist a “free kittens” sign nailed to a telephone pole. There was a barn attached to our house, so the cats had their choice about having shelter and catching mice, moles and snakes, or being truly indoors.

Over the years, my brother and I estimated there must have been more than 50 cats that came and went at our house over a span of 20 years. They all got along, played together and had individual personalities. Our recollections are that they were all — save for an accidental feral cat — happy to be lap cats. Especially in the winter!

Ultimately, whether it’s “better” to have a male or female cat is dependent on one question: which cat do you respond to? And I hope you ask this question at a rescue or  shelter, where the cats have been fixed, vaccinated and have had their temperaments evaluated.

Sally Cragin is the director of Be PAWSitive: Therapy Pets and Community Education. Send questions to [email protected].