I love dogs that act like cats (a little more independent than the in-your-face-24/7 dogs). I have never been crazy about cats and they have too many downsides with disease, messing with the garden, etc.
But I could imagine deciding to get a semi-wild outdoor cat if we ended up with a bad rodent problem, since we are in a Hantavirus and plague area. Thankfully we haven't been faced with that yet. Our closest neighbors (~1/2 mile away) have had to get cats because of the rodent issue. They are a bit downhill from us, so in a slightly less arid and more vegetated area.