Dog Friends, Cat Friends, and the Rare Breed Who Are Both
Or, Why Your Fun Friend Couldn't Hold You Through the Hard Stuff
You’ve eaten lunch with her almost every day for two years. You know her coffee order, her boss’s name, and her whole situation with her sister and her lousy boyfriend. At work, she’s your person.
Then, you go through a terrible breakup that knocks you on your ass. (Or maybe a relative dies. Or you get scary health news.) And you call her for support, naturally.
She picks up. She’s warm. She listens for a few minutes. And then, the conversation drifts. Or stalls. She changes the subject, and mentions something that happened at the office. You laugh at the right moments. You hang up and realize you feel exactly as alone as you did before you called.
She didn’t do anything wrong. She just didn’t know how to hold your pain.
Because what you built together — all those lunches, all those easy interactions — was a doggy friendship. You were always side by side, but you were never really face-to-face.
Doggy Friends and Kitty Friends
Doggy friends are agentic (that’s the social science-y word for them), which means that the friendship lives in motion — in the doing, the going, the side-by-side. These are your hiking partners, your errand companions, your favorite co-workers, your “want to grab a ticket to that show?” people. Dogs want to be out in the world with you. The activity/shared goal/task is the whole point of the hang.
Kitty friends are communal. The friendship lives in presence — in the sitting, the talking, the processing. These are your no-makeup, messy rat bun, couch-and-herbal-tea people, your long-phone-call people, your “I need a hug” people. Cats want to curl up next to your life and witness it. The whole point is to just be together.
Bras and Toes
Another way to tell which kind of friendship you’re dealing with is: if your bra is on, it’s most likely a doggy friendship. If you’re hanging out without a bra on, it’s probably a kitty one.
I’ve been trying to think of an equivalent metric for men. My sister Rachel came up wit a way for men to tell what kind of friendship they have with another man: if neither has seen the other’s toes, it’s a doggy friendship. If both have seen their toes, it’s probably a kitty one. I’m open to revising this theory, but for now it stands.
Most of us have both types of friends. Most of us are one type more than the other.
She’s offering the only kind of comfort she’s ever had to offer you, because that’s always been enough before.
And most friction in friendship — that vague feeling of being let down by someone who actually cares about you — comes from applying the wrong expectations to the friendship style you’ve been practicing together.
Your doggy friend isn’t failing you when she suggests a yoga class (or coffee run, or Costco pop-in) after your hard news. She’s doing what she knows. She’s offering the only kind of comfort she’s ever had to offer you, because that’s always been enough before. The pattern you built together didn’t include emotional support on this level.
That’s not a character flaw: It’s a misapplied expectation. And knowing the difference can save you a lot of silent resentment.
Can Doggy Friendships Transition into Kitty Ones?
I’m glad you asked. Yes. But it requires two things.
The first is shared values, not just shared activities. When you realize you and your farmers market friend actually see the world the same way, something shifts. The conversation stops being about what you’re doing and starts being about who you are.
The second is range. A friendship deepens when someone starts showing up for all the roles you carry, not just the version of you they met. When your gym friend asks about your marriage. When your errand buddy remembers your mom’s doctor’s appointment. When they stop seeing you as friend and start seeing you as wife, mother, worker, daughter, person.
That’s when the doggy friendship starts becoming something else entirely.
Here’s the thing I find most useful about this framework: it helps you stop pathologizing friendships that are actually fine.
Not every friendship is supposed to hold everything. Some of the best ones are built entirely on motion and laughter and never go deep. That’s not a lesser friendship. That’s a doggy friendship, and it’s worth having.
The question isn’t whether your friendships are vulnerable enough. It’s whether you know what kind of friendship you’re actually in — and whether you’re asking it to be something it was never designed to be.
One Last Thing
If you have someone in your life you can do both with — someone you can run errands with on a Tuesday and fall apart with on a Wednesday — hold onto them.
That’s the rare breed.
That’s your best friend.
I’m Anna Goldfarb, and I write about friendship every week at Friendship Explained. If this resonated, share it with a friend — doggy or kitty.
“I’ve been trying to think of an equivalent metric for men. My sister Rachel came up with a way for men to tell what kind of friendship they have with another man: if neither has seen the other’s toes, it’s a doggy friendship. If both have seen their toes, it’s probably a kitty one. I’m open to revising this theory, but for now it stands.”
I legitimately just cackled at this, then asked my partner—out of nowhere—how many of his friends have seen his toes. Theory checks out.