Salon and Sarah Hepola via a link from Larvatus Prodeo:
For what it's worth, I didn't mean to be a cat person. I grew up with a healthy, sneering disdain for the painfully middlebrow antics of "America's Funniest Home Videos," for the "Hang in there!" posters of kittens clinging precociously to a tree limb. But there was this orange tabby, and blah blah blah, and suddenly my clothes are covered in stubborn fur. Thing is, to be a cat person is something of a private affair. We don't meet at the park and throw sticks. We don't parade our animals down the block or stand around, chatting awkwardly while our pets sniff each others' rear ends. Whatever your cat does -- the way he curls up like a croissant and snores, the way he pads frantically about the bed at 4:30 a.m., paw to your face -- is largely between you and the torn furniture. Which is another reason I think cat culture erupted online, the same reason people get pets in the first place: It's nice to know you're not alone. Other people's cats do this stuff, too.........
In fact, I would submit that cats and kittens might outnumber porn at this point.
"You're probably right about that," says Scott Lamb, a senior editor at the trend-spotting site Buzzfeed. "That might be for the very prosaic reason that producing anything involving kittens is just so much easier than producing porn." After all, we're a nation of shutterbug narcissists, and cats are the closet thing at hand. "Panda ownership is not so common," he says, "but perhaps if it were, panda videos would be even more popular."
Hear that Senator Conroy? We're all probably more interested in kittehs than ti - well you get the picture.
