As far back as I can remember, I've had a pet cat. My parents (when they were still together) were both a bit obsessed with cats. We never picked up a dog because my parents just weren't dog people, and so I never really got to like dogs myself. As a result of my selective childhood, I picked friends who also liked cats (unintentionally I think), and never forayed into what makes people choose canines. I also never really thought about the kinds of people who liked cats, being one of them. That is until for the first time in my life, I don't have a cat in the home.

I recently moved out of my mothers house and into a second story apartment with my boyfriend. Without any easy way for a cat to travel in and out of the building, we decided not to get one. I was in two minds about the change - I both missed having a small animal to hug and was thrilled that I could start wearing black clothes without the silvery sheen of fur all over them.

The strangeness started when I went to visit my mother, I noticed that she talked about her cats alot - the ones we'd both had before I moved out - she would also call me and put the cats on the phone sometimes, insisting that they could hear it was me and were happy to hear my voice. At the time, I just put it down to the strangeness of my mother, who can be oh-so-very strange. I also started noticing that my dad often talked about his own two cats a lot as well, how they get on with each other and how they intereact with other dogs, family members and their strange eating habits.

The other night I was at my cousins and I noticed that her cat followed people into the toilets. I commented that an old cat of mine had had that habit (she used to follow people into the toilet and stare at them as they used it). My cousin replied gleefully that no he(the cat) didn't watch people go to the toilet, he went in there with people for company while he ate - as that is where they leave the cat food. She went on to say that the cat had recently started trying to make people go into the toilet when he was hungry by pacing around the door way and nudging the other residents as they went past.

I was starting to see a connection between all these people, and I was starting to suspect that if I had had a cat at that moment, it would have seemed perfectly normal and cute - I would have continued the conversation by reciting all the weird foibles of my own pet and we would have had a lot of fun comparing disfunctional animals.

Having a cat is like having your own feline soap opera. There's the cat-fights and medical appointments as, with baited breath, you await the results of his infected ear. There are teen pregnancy issues as you decide whether or not to spay a kitten and before you do they have their own little batch of babies. Then there's the trauma of paying for extra mouths and trying to find good homes, marrying them off to responsible children and parents who would provide properly for the kitten.

They only eat special kinds of food and starve themselves if you accidentally get a can of fish insteaed of lamb. They will sleep right in the middle of your bed under the doona, and make you feel guilty when you sit on them. Then when you are sleeping they will jump back onto the bed and curl up in exactly the wrong spot so that you cant roll over and consequently get up in the morning walking like Igor.

And people love it, they love being bossed around by pint-sized panthers. Dog people on the other hand seem far more serious and able-minded, they don't seem to talk 24/7 about their dogs or complain about the latest cat-drama. But that could be because I still don't really know many people with dogs.

I tried explaining this to my cousin, but she didn't understand. Maybe one day when she moves out - she too will be bemused by the cat-person personality.