Cat . . . ladies

I was asked today why there are crazy cat ladies, but not crazy dog ladies. Here are some thoughts:

-The strongest connection between animal hoarding and mental illness is OCD. Hoarding in general is common with OCD and animal hoarding can both serve as an obsession and a compulsion.
-They frequently are delusional, so don’t realize they are incapable of caring for all their pets. This really throws out any logical reasons as to why they’d collect cats (they are easier to keep indoors, are quieter so easier to keep hidden, somewhat easier to provide with food.)
-They often have attachment disorder (overly fond of their pets) and paranoid/antisocial disorder (dislike of people) which may be more conducive to keeping cats than keeping dogs.
-Men more often collect dogs, women collect cats. I would guess there is no dog-man stereotype because dog collecting men would more often be homeless or in jail (two large repositories of mentally ill men.)
-Animal hoarding may be connected to a mothering instinct. So there would be more cat ladies than dog men.
- If they’re schizophrenic they could be having auditory hallucinations and cat’s are quieter.
- If they’re paranoid cats are generally less threatening. There is no cat equivalent to Kujo. And we all know that cats are horrible team players so they can’t gang up on you.

This article was way interesting: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/magazine/09_10_catcoat.html?_r=2&ref=magazine&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
They become cat ladies because a parasite makes them like cats. Awesome. Probably not true, but awesome.