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The story’s title, “Cat Person,” speaks to the significance of animal imagery in the story, referencing the convenient but insufficient categories people create, especially in relationships conducted over social media, to understand each other. “Is he a cat person or a dog person?” may sound like a handy and amusing way to assign someone to a neat little box and thus make that person more knowable, but resorting to this shorthand way of knowing is unpredictable, as Margot discovers.
Whether Robert has made up Mu and Yan, his cats, as part of his flirtatious texts and thus is not actually a “cat person” is not clear. Margot enjoys the little stories they tell in which his cats, along with her childhood cat Pita, vie for affection, but later she wonders whether the cats, which she never sees, exist. Regardless, Margot senses that his true nature is possibly more threatening; he is like “a large, skittish animal, like a horse or a bear,” powerful enough to harm her, and the idea of controlling such a creature both pleases and intimidates her.
Animal imagery is also prevalent in the story’s description of sex. Robert makes “a high-pitched, feminine whine” that disturbs Margot. He growls his sex talk, and concludes the encounter in a “frantic rabbity burst,” reminding readers of the rabbit-fur cap he wears. After sex, when Robert kisses her forehead—an action that earlier made her feel treasured—Margot feels “like a slug” dissolving in salt. The story’s animal imagery reaches a disgusting peak when, after breaking up with Robert, Margot feels that a “leech, grown heavy and swollen with her blood,” has detached itself, leaving a wound behind.
