What Constitues a Cat Lady?

Last night we worked late into the evening to repair some screen doors for a customer. I like re-screening doors and windows; it's quick easy work and you have a nice new screen when you are all done. George and I don't usually talk a lot when working together on a project especially if it's late and we're tired.

However, last night George must have something weighing heavy on his mind because he made me promise that if he died before I did that I would not become a "crazy cat lady" and get a whole bunch of cats I couldn't take care of and let them spray all over everything.  He seemed very worried I might do this.  Um..... NO, nada, so not happening. I am a bonafide dog person; more specifically a beagle person.

So, after a moment of letting him think I might actually be planning to get 30 cats I told him it was far more likely that I would surround myself with a heard of howling beagles. (Sorry if you happen to be a neighbor of ours :)  Yep, I would myself several of these little guys:

It's not that I don't like cats, I just like dogs more, but I've had many positive experiences with cats.

Growing up, we had plenty of cats, but they weren't quite tame, they were barn cats. They were essentially wild animals that you never purposefully fed; they lived outside, but often you would find a nest of kittens up in the haw mow.  In the winter they lived in the barn and helped keep the mice and barn swallow populations down. Sometimes I would be able to "make friends" with a certain cat and then cozy up to her kittens and hold them.  We had a giant tom of a barn cat that we creatively called Tom. He used to love to hang on the kitchen screen door at mealtime.

Once when I was at a farm auction with Daddy I made fast friends with a young, farm cat; about a year old. All during the auction I begged my dad to buy him for me. As if they sell cats at a barn auction.....In the farming world barn cats stay with the farm and the next owners take them on. I know it sounds cruel by today's standards, but that's just how it is or at least was.  I wanted this little cat and I'm sure Daddy was thinking we've got 5 or 6 of those things at home.The old farmer that was selling his place at auction that day said I could have the cat if I promised to name the cat after him. So Charley he became. For a good long time I used to drag Charley into the house, feed him and try to make it into a pet.  He didn't want any part of that, so he joined the ranks of the barn cats.

After George's strong prohibition against me becoming a cat lady, I got to wondering, what exactly constitutes a cat lady? Is it somebody that just likes cats and has one or two or three?  My mom has 2 cats (used to be 3) in a small apartment and will feed just about any stray, but I don't think of her as a cat lady. Is it somebody with 10 cats, but they are all very well cared for, healthy and their house doesn't smell to high heaven? Is it somebody with 20 cats? Is is somebody with one cat and yet everything in the entire house is coated in a fabric of cat hair and stinkys terribly? What do you think? What is a "cat lady" to you?

My many years of waiting on the public in a grocery store was in many ways an education in people. As they say, everyone's got to eat and they will make their way into a grocery store at some point. And, guess what: Cat Ladies shop too. Here are my observations based on up close and personal assessments of cat ladies for 8 years. Out of the hundreds, possibly thousands of customers I waited on, close to half regularly buy cat food and may just have one or two cats. These are not the folks I'm discussing.  These observations are based on people that had a lot of cats and routinely bought cat food in large quantities, that I assume was for cats and not for themselves. (Contrary to popular sob stories, poor people do not buy and consume cat food for themselves. It is actually far more expensive than people food. )


1. They are Cat Ladies. It is very rare to ever see a man routinely buying a lot of cat food. As a matter of fact, out of dozens of cat ladies; I can only think of one man that did and he was married to a cat lady.

2. Cat Ladies have a very distinct demographic:

They are almost always white, late middle aged, single and childless. Oh, and you can also add in very overweight.  I've always wondered about this; particularly the late middle age thing, how come I've never seen a young "cat lady" in all my years of working in the store?  I totally get the single and childless thing; I had Barney for years before marrying George. He is my baby. Out of the all the cat ladies I know from the store only one was married (see #1). George would probably say that's because no man wants to be in competition with cats for a woman's affection.

3. Cat Ladies are covered in cat hair when they go out in public. And I do mean covered; as if they got wet and rolled in a giant pile of hair. It is also very interesting to note that cat ladies typically wear clothing that is very prone to static electricity (think polyester knits) so it's as if the hair finds you and then sticks on as you walk by. I always marveled at that.

4. There are more Cat Ladies than you think. When I first started clerking in the grocery store I was supremely surprised at the sheer number of cat ladies. In our small grocery store, we had about 3 dozen we knew by name that came in at least weekly or every few days.  I had no idea there were this many! Many were very nice ladies that would pass the time of day with you. They would tell you about their cats and show you pictures they carry in their pocketbooks.

5. Cat Ladies feed their cats canned, wet food almost exclusively. I have no idea why and have always wondered about that. It costs a gazillion times more than dry cat food.

6.  Cat Ladies buy very little cat litter. Seriously, for the amount of cat food purchased and the number of cats they have they don't buy much litter.

While typing this, I realized that almost every single reader of this blog is a woman; maybe even a Cat Lady. If you are, please don't be offended because, given the right circumstances I would happily be a "Dog Lady" with a whole herd of howling beagles.