He has a cat. What does that say about him?
Man and cat. This is not the “Mark” referred to in the post. Photo by Sophie.
Keeping a cat and doing it well is a positive sign in respect of a person’s character. I recently employed, on a short-term contract, a software engineer to do some very technical coding stuff to speed up the site’s loading time. His name is Mark Kaplun. He is an Israeli living in Israel.
He has a girlfriend and I discovered that she brought to the relationship a couple of cats. I spoke to Mark using Skype to get a feel for what he was thinking so that I could make a judgement on whether to employ him or not as I had never met him before. I did not know anything about him other than that he was a software engineer.
While we were talking he laughed and mentioned that a kitten was in the way of him operating his computer properly. I said, “You have a cat?” He said, “Yes”. So I responded by saying that if someone cares for a cat it is a helpful sign to me that he is OK and trustworthy. It was a moment that confirmed for me that we should proceed. It felt right for me. My judgement was proved correct, by the way. Mark is a very good coder and he is trustworthy.
If I have to employ a software engineer to change the code that runs PoC, the website, and do things that may harm the site, I have to give him access to very sensitive parts of the site. In order to do that I have to trust him. How do you tell whether you can trust someone you have never met before?
Well, as I said, you get a feel for a person’s character when you talk to them. I could not see Mark because his webcam was not turned on but a person can still learn quite a lot from many elements of a conversation.
The clincher was that fact he had a cat. I think if a man likes cats and cares for a cat it is a very good indicator that you can trust him. I am sticking to men in this discussion because for some strange reason I don’t think that the same test applies to women. Am I incorrect in that thought?
This is probably because it is more unusual for men to like and keep cats so that if it does happen it becomes a sign. It is significant. Whereas a higher percentage of women like cats and therefore it is not unusual. It is not a standout indicator of anything in particular.
Can you say for sure that a man who keeps a cat and does a good job of caring for his cat, is trustworthy? No, of course not. You can’t guarantee that until you know the person better. However, if a person is a good cat caretaker he must have a tenderness towards animals and an awareness. A person who is tender and kind towards animals is more likely to have an open mind and a giving heart. It is more likely that he will be a genuine person and it follows from that it is more likely that he will be trustworthy. The test is whether the person is genuine or a fake. The former indicates trustworthiness while the latter is much harder to trust.
This is not to say that a person without a cat is untrustworthy. That would be a silly idea. It is that keeping a cat is a positive sign. You could not say the same about keeping a dog, incidentally.