I was surprised to find out they're felines, too. Well, technically "feliform", closer to things like mongooses and meerkats I think. But they're not canines, like I thought up until like 10 years ago, so now I can say there's a cat that I like!

Actually I take that back, I do like caracals, and I kinda like lynxes, and those are proper cats.

I'd describe my feelings towards house cats, lions, tigers, etc. as more "indifferent" than "dislike", but not actively loving cats is seen as odd by the internet as a whole. Much like rodents, I'm warming up to felines a bit as time goes on.

I suppose, first and foremost, I should address commissions. Lately, my hours have been getting cut at work, which is good in some ways, but not so good in others. I'd prefer to discuss commissions by note/PM/whatever they call it here, it's just easier to keep track of things and it doesn't clog up the comments section with our back-and-forth and sharing of WIPs and whatnot.
I'm honestly hesitant to start taking commissions at the moment, especially with everything else going on, but I suppose taking a couple here and there from friends just to keep busy and bring in a few extra bucks is a good place to start.

Ah, yes, toxoplasmosis. I'm pretty sure that one's actually a parasite, not a virus, but it can only really reproduce in cats, which is why it makes prey animals suddenly want to be eaten. Don't tell the people with the fetish for being swallowed/eaten about this one... Anyways, pretty sure it's not really a threat to humans despite infection being relatively common, although it does make me think about how something like that would affect the anthropomorphic population--I haven't ever really bothered to explore the relationship between anthropomorphic creatures and their bestial counterparts, but unlike many people, I'm really not bothered by an anthropomorphic dog having a normal dog as a pet any more than I'm bothered by humans interacting with gorillas or chimpanzees.

The Pallas's Cat does seem like something I'd try to base a species on, now that you mention it. Feline forms (aside from hyenas) are oddly rare in my universe for some reason, although not from lack of trying! I have a couple underutilized characters based off domestic cats, one being a girl named Tiffany that I really do remember liking but just never doing anything with. I have a couple lion characters, a cougar, and a panther, none of which I've drawn since Obama left office and all of which were police officers for some reason. Maybe I was subconsciously trying to subvert the "police dog" trope by having the cops all be felines/feliforms (there's also a hyena named Jacinto Cruz, who I did a bit more with than I did with Lonnie, Ian, or Tamaya).

I do like your idea for a character and that does sound like something that would fit into my universe, especially given the prevalence of blue-collar space types in my art. I probably should try branching out more with my art and trying to break some of the monotony, I've been trying to draw more rodents (another group I've never really cared for until a few years back) and random hybrid things I end up just using as "aliens", most of which seem to have some sort of bovine component to them.

I have also been considering (and then forgetting about) drawing some sort of llama/alpaca-otter hybrid, based on some of our discussions in the past--if you don't want to be a grumpy Pallas Cat, maybe some sort of alpaca otter critter instead? There's also no rule stating you can't have multiple characters or even multiple characters you call "fursona", surprisingly. Some people seem to insist that you have ONE fursona and that's the only character you can ever own or use (and when you inevitably tire of them and make something new, you retire the FurAffinity account associated with your last fursona and make a new one for your current one), yet here I am with anywhere from 5 to 10 different characters named "Dominic" (not counting Dominic Wolff and Dominic Mephitto twice, as their human forms and Great Horned Hellhound/Great Horned Skunkdog forms are the same character, just transformed, but that number depends how you count obvious variants of the name "Dominic" such as "Dominicus" and "Dominika" and "Daminaak"), and I'm told that's fine too.

Anyways, if and when you want to talk commissions, let's do that in notes instead. I'm still deciding what my price point will be if/when I start taking commissions again, and we'll need to discuss things about this character themselves in more detail. I think this will actually be my second or third time helping someone create a character, so I have a little bit of experience with that at least!