Owning six cats is nothing for a fellow to be ashamed of
Everyone knows about Mad Cat Lady. She's a social cliché, a cautionary tale, a character that, when she started to pop up on The Simpsons, was so instantly resonant that she didn't have to be named or introduced. She's the childless woman who lets her cat obsession take over her life, to the detriment of domestic and, finally, personal hygiene. In truth, as a stereotype she seemsunfair. After all, there is no established Mad Dog Man - the subtext being that a man's best friend will help him to see out the autumn of his life with dignity, while a woman's will put her alone in a supermarket, giving off a mildewy odour and pushing a trolley containing a malt loaf, some hairnets, a packet of wafer-thin ham and two dozen cans of Felix.
The phenomenon of Mad Cat Man is even less widely reported. One of the reasons for this is that us males are still suspicious of cat ownership. Being a heterosexual man and admitting to another heterosexual man that you like cats can feel a little like telling him that you still sleep alongside your childhood collection of teddy bears.
