By Emine Saner TheGuardian
Cat Cernik, 29, a teacher, and Lucy Porter, 27, a painter and decorator, live in Cheshire. They met in September 2017
In that very modern way, Lucy found Cat on the dating app Tinder and they started messaging each other through Instagram. “I looked at your Instagram and started following you,” says Cat. “We bonded over a mutual love of animals.” Lucy says: “I saw that Cat had a horse, and there were lots of pictures with her mum and dad’s dog. Her love of animals was a big attraction.”
Cat liked the photos of Lucy with her dog Perry, a French bulldog who is now snoozing between them on the sofa at home in Cheshire. “With Instagram, so many people take posed photos of everything and with filters,” says Cat to her girlfriend, “but a lot of yours were quite natural and you put some unflattering photos up as well, which were funny.”
After messaging for a couple of weeks, they met up halfway between Cat’s home in Cheshire and Lucy’s home in the West Midlands to take Perry for a walk. “Cat didn’t stop talking,” Lucy recalls. And she read the dog a bedtime story. “I can’t remember why now,” says Cat.
“Cat’s a teacher and she had brought a book with her,” says Lucy. “She read it to Perry. It was one of those things that I just loved. If she loved my dog, then that was a massive tick.”
What were their first impressions? “I thought she was fit,” says Lucy, laughing. Cat smiles. “I think we just got on, didn’t we? We had a lot to talk about; there was never really anything awkward. Even when I fell in a bush – we got a bit lost and there was undergrowth and we had to walk through it.”
Soon afterwards, Lucy went to Australia for a month but they sent each other messages all the time. “The conversation didn’t stop,” says Lucy. “I was laughing so hard. I really wanted to come back to the UK to meet up with you and see you. When I got back, that was it – we couldn’t be apart.” They met up in a pub the next day. “I was terrified, wasn’t I? I was so nervous,” says Lucy.
Had they decided then that they were in a relationship? “People say, ‘When you know, you know’, and I always used to think that was cheesy and a bit cringey, but yeah, to be fair, that was it, really,” says Cat. “I think I’d always struggled before in relationships, bonding with somebody … I didn’t really feel a click.” Six months later, they had moved in together.
Lucy had been out to her family since she was 22, but Cat hadn’t. “I just kind of dropped it on them one day,” she says. “They had noticed I was messaging someone a lot. My sister was like: ‘Get that stupid look off your face.’ They asked who it was.” She turns to Lucy. “We used to call you ‘dog lady’ because I’d told my mum that I was meeting up with a friend I’d met via Instagram to walk her dog. I remember my mum saying: ‘Make sure she’s not a murderer.’ So now I said, ‘Well, it’s … you know the girl I went on a walk with the other day?’ and my mum said, ‘What, dog lady?’ When they thought back, they weren’t really surprised because I’d never really shown any interest in boys.”
If she took so long to come out, it wasn’t because she was worried about her family’s reaction. “It was more that it had been a long process for me. I think it took up until I met Lucy to really think, actually yes …” “That’s who I am,” says Lucy (they finish each other’s sentences a lot).
“That’s it, really,” Cat agrees. “I dated women before as well as men, but I hadn’t had a serious relationship before you.” She loves, she says, “having someone you feel that comfortable with, where you can say anything.”
Lucy smiles. “I didn’t think I’d ever meet anybody who actually really made me happy,” she says. “I’d had toxic relationships in the past and it brought out the worst in me, whereas you have brought out the best in me.” Their dog, who has been gently snoring, wakes up and looks around.
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