TRUE CAT LOVERS

The best and most committed cat caretakers I know personally have loved cats all their lives.

So, are we born loving cats?

I must have been, because as far back as I can remember I’ve loved every cat I’ve ever seen.

My late mother told me that from when I was a toddler if I saw a cat in our garden I’d run out to stroke it, even if I was in the middle of being dressed. She worried the cat might scratch me but I don’t remember that ever happening, she taught me to be gentle with all animals and I suppose if the cat didn’t want to be petted he would have ran away from me.

Cats were irresistible to me even then and they still are.

I deeply love and respect the 2 cats we have now and I melt inside at their perfection every time I look at them, as I have over all the cats in my life for the last 38 years.

The love and trust in their eyes as they look at us shows they appreciate us as much as we do them.

We are a family.

But also I love and care for all other cats too, not only friends and neighbours cats, the welfare of each and every cat no matter where in the world they are, is important to me.

My late father was a dog man, he didn’t like cats and although I love dogs too, especially the family dogs of my childhood, my life felt incomplete without cats in it.

My mother was a cat lover and her family always had cats around and she missed that when she was married, but after our dad died suddenly we were able to have cats in our home and that gave her great comfort.

So, do we inherit our love of cats from a parent?

I’ve known people who said they were afraid of cats, there is a genuine phobia called Ailurophobia, but mostly their fear was only because they hadn’t been around cats and didn’t understand them.

So, are people who learn to love cats as committed to their welfare and do they love them as much as people who have always loved them?

Breeders of pedigree cats and interbred wild/domestic cats, by breeding and selling those cats add to the numbers of ordinary unwanted cats who might otherwise have had a home.

So are they true cat lovers?

Some people only like a certain breed of cat and pay enormous sums of money to ‘own’ the cat even though there are thousands of equally beautiful cats in Rescue Shelters desperately needing homes.

So, are people who only want a pedigree cat, true cat lovers?

Maybe we true cat lovers are born loving cats more than any other species because as much as I love all animals they have never give me the pleasure seeing a kitten or a cat, or even a picture of one, gives me.

Ruth