How many cats does it take to make someone a "crazy cat person"?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I wish there were an increment/decrement button for number of cats so that I could make this poll much more thorough, adjusting for age, sex, family size, other pets, location (rural, suburban, city, etc.). As it is, I’ll just have to pick arbitrary thresholds to keep the selectable poll items down.

Please chime in with the number of cats you have, or even the maximum number you ever had, and whether or not you think you’re completely crazy!

As for me, I’m a male who lives alone and I lived for a very long time with 10 cats (down to seven now). And yes, I think I’m completely bonkers – but I don’t care (just like most crazy people).

2

I don’t think there’s a hard-and-fast number - it depends on how many cats you can care for properly. This includes keeping litter pans clean, feeding, veterinary care, individual attention, and making sure your place doesn’t smell like a giant litter-pan. Ten cats sounds like a lot, but if it didn’t wreck your home and the cats were reasonably happy, what of it?

3

For a single person, any more than two cats is “crazy cat person.” Whereas I know a married woman with kids who has twelve cats, four dogs, two horses, and a ferret, and no one thinks she’s nuts.

It’s totally about how society views you.

4

Boy, you people work fast – you got some comments in there before I got the poll up! Anyways, please vote! I’d love to see what people’s perceptions are.

5

It is more about whether you talk about them like this or not.

6

I chose living alone with more than 4 cats but that is fairly arbitrary. Upon reflection, I agree with mikews99 that the level of care and hygiene comes into play.

And there is something folded in about not just having the right number of cats to satisfy a need for love and companionship but kinda hoarding the cats beyond the level of being able to enjoy them very much.

I guess that for me the working definition is CCP is “someone who compulsively has more cats than he or she is able to adequately love and care for.” whatever the actual number is.

7

Male, live alone, have 2 cats. My partner lives next door with 2 dogs. He sometimes brings them over, and the cats don’t hiss at them quite as much as they used to.

I have a 3-bedroom house, and have plenty of room for more cats. Actually, I’m seriously considering getting a third. The only issue is how much of my life do I want to spend cleaning out the litter boxes. If that weren’t a consideration I’d already have a third.

4, though, would definitely qualify me as a CCP.

8

What I find completely baffling is having multiple cats of mixed gender that aren’t neutered . . . and the population keeps growing exponentially. What are these people thinking (if at all)?

9

Other than being broke from veterinary bills (I think I bought my veterinarian a new Mercedes), there hasn’t been much of a downside. Of course the worst part of having so many cats is having to go through much more loss as they grow old and die.

10

when the smell is more obvious than the cats, you qualify.

11

There isn’t any precise number of cats that can’t be exceeded. It’s about that you just can’t have more cats than you can adequatly provide for.

12

submitted for your approval:
http://crazycatladyactionfigure.com/

13

The level of care comes into play, certainly, but I devised a formula a while back that I think works well:

C = P+1

where C is the upper limit of cats in the household, and P is the number of people living in the house.

Thus, one person with two cats is fine. One person with three or more cats is a CCP. If you have a lively household with five people, you can have up to six cats before things get weird.

14

and from the self-test on the back
http://www.flickr.com/photos/26870187@N02/4624858431/

15

Obviously one needs four cats to be a crazy cat lady. This is obvious because I have three, duh. :slight_smile:

Somebody in a previous thread gave a good answer, I think - no more “pet” animals (fish livestock and such don’t count) than there are hands to pet them with. So my boyfriend and I have four hands between us and four animals. No way could we have another one - four is really one too many and the first one to go will probably not be replaced.

16

I couldn’t vote–you don’t have my answer:

Anybody with ONE cat is a crazy cat person. Gender is irrelevant (cat or person).

Oh yeah, IMHO…

17

I couldn’t vote–you don’t have my answer:

Anybody with ONE cat is a crazy cat person. Gender is irrelevant (cat or person).

Oh yeah, IMHO…

18

It only takes one cat with a crazy person to make a crazy cat person.

19

We had 4 cats when this all started. We seem to have gained a few more in the past couple of weeks.
If we weren’t ‘crazy cat people’ before, we will be. Soon, I imagine.

There was a stray cat that we’ve been feeding for the past two years. We named him Todd. Well, we recently discovered that Todd is female, and she was pregnant. We didn’t see her for awhile, until a couple of weeks ago. She brought all 4 of her kittens to our front porch, one at a time. We just stood there, and watched her bring them to us, and wondered how many of them she had.
When she was finished hauling her kittens, she just stood there, looked at us, and then looked at the kittens, then looked back to us. She gave a really sad ‘Meooooowooow’, like she didn’t know what she was going to do.
She was really pathetic. It worked.

We took pity on her, and brought them all in, kept them in the bathroom, away from our other cats, and took them to our vet the next day. She had a test to see if she had Feline Leukemia, and she was negative.
So, our vet checked her out, checked the kittens out (2 male, 2 female), gave her shots, wormed her, wormed the kittens, set us up with plenty of Science Diet Kitten Food, a date for her to be spayed (June 2nd), and now we’ve got 9 cats. They all live inside with us, our two dogs, our two ratties, and our 5 birds.

We’ve named them Ronon, Carson, Emma, and Teyla.
It’s a good thing our house isn’t exactly small.

Deity help me.

20

I was going to post this. Clearly now I know where those notes on this theorem, stolen lo these many years ago, ended up.