Thanks to readers, we’ve scraped up enough cat-related articles to have another Caturday felid post. But it’s precarious! We have contributions but not enough ailurophiles.
First, a rare cat article from the NYT praising “cat men”. Now you don’t need two X-chromosomes to be stereotyped. Click below to read, or find the article archived here.
An excerpt:
Before [joseph] Clayson drove trucks, he spent six years in the military, which he described as “not really a career that draws cat lovers.” He rarely sees other truck drivers with cats, but when he does, he said, it signals an understanding.
“When I see another dude with a cat in his truck and I walk up to say hi, I feel like they’re on the same wavelength as me,” he said. “They’re not worried about looking ultramasculine.”
Cats haven’t changed: They’ve always been independent, mercurial, complex and selective with affection. But as cat ownership in the United States surges, many men’s perceptions of what it means to own a cat — and culture’s perceptions of the men who own them — are shifting.
In the United States, the ranks of cat people have continued to grow. According to the American Pet Products Association, 2024 was a record year, with cat ownership surging 23 percent. And an APPA report published Monday found that men account for 43 percent of U.S. cat owners, with a particular bump in Gen Z male cat ownership.
Amid this growth, a slew of recent ad campaigns celebrate the idea of the “cat dad” as not simply a man who owns a cat, but a softer, more emotionally literate version of a man.
People magazine teamed up with Temptations treats to name the actor Dave Franco the magazine’s first “Sexiest Cat Dad” last fall. In February, Christina Najjar, an author and lifestyle influencer known as Tinx, began a partnership with the cat food brand Jinx built around the idea that being a cat person is now a dating green flag. For Father’s Day 2025, the cat food brand Smalls ran a campaign that framed cat dads as role models, with the slogan “cat dads > other men.”
Here’s a video from Temptations cat treats showing how they rejiggered their advertising to appeal to “cad dads”:
. . .Smalls got the inspiration for its cat dad campaign from the N.B.A. star Jordan Poole’s reveal of the “Secret Society of N.B.A. Cat Dads,” where the famous cat lover confessed he was persuading fellow players, including Steph Curry and Myles Turner, to get cats.
The professional athlete cat dad flies in the face of men-with-cats stereotypes. A 2020 study from Colorado State University found that men holding cats were viewed as less masculine; more neurotic, agreeable and open; and therefore, less datable by women. (The study did not cover how cats affected gay men’s perceptions of potential partners.)
. . .In her 2022 documentary “Cat Daddies,” which features nine cat dads and their furry companions, Mye Hoang follows a firefighter, a police officer and an immigrant living on the streets of New York City, among others. She became interested in the topic after seeing more men with cats on Instagram. “Seeing men being vulnerable with a little creature is just something I hadn’t thought about,” she said. Her new documentary, “25 Cats From Qatar,” which is about a cat rescue in the country, is screening now.
Hoang said she had seen an uptick in single men in the cat community in recent years, and was even considering moving to Portland, Ore., or Minneapolis, which reportedly have higher concentrations of single cat dads. “If you’re willing to put up with a cat, you’re probably willing to put up with me,” she said. “You are probably a good partner.”
And, for your delectation, here’s the full 1.5-hour documentary “Cad Daddies”:
And here’s the trailer for Hoang’s “25 Cats from Qatar”:
Finally, an adorable Cat Daddy:
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We just finished the Fat Bear Contest with Backpack taking gold. Now it’s time for the Chonky Cat Contest, run by Jonathan Edward Durham on Facebook. Vote for the chonkiest cat and notice that “It’s not just about size. It’s about vibe. . . ”
There are nineteen potential winners and I’ll show a selection below. You vote in the comments on a particular chonkster you love.
Here are six, but go over and see ’em all:
Now of course it’s not healthy for a cat to be a chonk, so I’m not encouraging the production of fat cats!
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Fox News 4 in Dallas-Fort Worth reports on the birth of twin Sumatran Tiger cubs at the Fort Worth Zoo. Click on the headline below to read, and watch the video at bottom:
The short article:
The cub sisters were born in July to first-time mom, Ndari, and dad, Rakan.
They’re now 12 weeks old and weigh about 20 pounds. That’s about the same as a large pumpkin.
The smaller of the two cubs is named Barani, which means “brave.” Her sister’s name is Malu, which means “reserved.”
Sumatran tigers are critically endangered, with fewer than 650 left in the wild.
Fort Worth Zoo’s Samatran tigers live in the newly renovated Predators of Asia and Africa habitat, which opened in 2023.
The cubs’ birth marks the first time Samatran tiger cubs have ever been born at the Fort Worth Zoo.
. . . The zoo said the cubs will make their public debut in the coming weeks.
Now the Sumatran tiger is not a species of tiger, as there is only one, Panthera tigris. Rather, as Wikipedia notes, it’s a subspecies of the tiger, a population called Panthera tigris sondaica that lives on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. There were population on Bali and Java, but they went extinct in the last century, and now there are nine named subspecies.
Here are the adorable cubs:
Lagniappe:
I don’t know who Colin the cat is, nor can I find any information about him on the Internet. But someone is interested in where he wanders:
— jane bellamy (@Stan2415loveu) September 26, 2026
Here’s a hyper-excited man talking about the Japanese artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798-1861), described by Wikipedia as
. . . . one of the last great masters of the Japanese ukiyo-e style of woodblock prints and painting.[2] He was a member of the Utagawa school.[3]
The range of Kuniyoshi’s subjects included many genres: landscapes, women, Kabuki actors, cats, and mythical animals. He is known for depictions of the battles of legendary samurai heroes.[4] His artwork incorporated aspects of Western representation in landscape painting and caricature.[2] He was an excellent teacher and had numerous pupils who continued his branch of the Utagawa school. His most important student was Yoshitoshi.
You can see several of Kuniyoshi’s cat paintings at the Wikipedia site. Here’s one in which he’s used cats to form the Japanese symbol for “catfish”:
The Japanese script for “catfish” in regular writing (kanji):
Here’s Jen, the Good News Girl, desribing Kiki the Scottish cat, who goes to school with her servant every day and hangs around until the servant goes home.
h/t: Stash Krod, Keith, Michael, Mark