[CAT] "Men who love cats and the women who love them"

[rfmcdonald]

Rebecca Dube writes about the subject in this post's subject line.

Any single woman with cats, plural, cringes at that dreaded stereotype - the Crazy Cat Lady.

But there's another beleaguered minority that has been suffering silently in her shadow: men who own, and love, cats.

Dudes with feline friends have historically been put on the defensive. Romping through the park with Rover is one thing, but spend some quality time with Mr. Whiskers and people start whispering about your masculinity.

But recently there have been signs of change. Online, men are professing their love for cats, and congregating with like-minded fanciers. A popular Flickr group has collected more than 600 photos of men cuddling their cats. "Down with rabid dogism!" cries the group's administrator. (In many of the photos the cat is actually obscuring the man's face - displaying either the residual shame associated with male cat ownership or the feline tendency to hog the camera, I'm not sure which.)

One of the biggest YouTube hits of last year was "An Engineer's Guide to Cats," a hilariously deadpan look at the joys of sharing one's life with cats, by engineer Paul Klusman. The video has been viewed more than 3.4 million times, and Mr. Klusman received more than a few marriage proposals as a result. (So far, he's sticking with his cats.)

As it should be, the new movement is long overdue, says cat lover Michael O'Sullivan, president of the Humane Society of Canada. He and his wife have one cat and one dog now, though in the past they've had as many as four cats. It was Mr. O'Sullivan who introduced his wife, a dog person, to the joys of felinity.

"I like their independent personalities," Mr. O'Sullivan says. As for the stereotypes, he says he knows plenty of macho men who wouldn't hesitate to adopt a cat. "I think I'm fairly masculine, and it's never really mattered to me."

The flickr group that Dube mentions is Men with their cats, and yes, I've joined.