Cypress: Best practise for conditional testing of presence of UI elements

I'm trying to start automated testing with Cypress. But apparently learning a new concept AND a new language is challenging... So I'm not sure if I found the best solution for simply testing the presence of UI elements depending on conditions.
All elements are rendered server-side.

So basically there is a DIV element which can contain either

• a DIV element of class 'card'

OR

• a P element of class 'no-ops'

In order to test this conditionally I figured out this code:

cy.get('div#section_paused_op').then(($div) => {
    if($div.find('div.card').length > 0) {
        cy.get('div#section_paused_op div.card').should('exist')
    } else {
        cy.get('div#section_paused_op p.no-ops').should('exist')
    }
})

So to test the existence of the DIV element of class 'card' in one case, I have to find it first with find(). Is this good practice or can this be done in a better way?