The Unsung Cat Man, Part II

It's no secret: at TID, we love men who love cats. True, we've celebrated such glorious specimens of manhood before, but why stop there? There are so many more males whose great contributions to the world of ailurophilia have yet to be praised. So without further ado, we present to you the second installment of The Unsung Cat Man!

1) The geeky-hot actor cat-man: Jesse Eisenberg

One of us (rhymes with Schmailey) is semi-convinced that The Social Network star is her soulmate. Why? It all started with this little interview:

 

He sets our ovaries aquiver! Dear Jesse: If you're reading this, we would like to marry you and share in your guilt by caring for foster cats with you and supporting your marvelous acting career (as long as you don't make any more Adventurelands - that movie was really not all it was chalked up to be, despite the stellar cast). 

But wait! There's more. Jesse also stars in a wonderful video encouraging people to foster cats AND narrates the audio book for Holly Black's White Cat. 'Nuff said.

2) The Nobel Prize-winning cat man: Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman is a rare breed: genius economist, unexpectedly lucid communicator and, of course, devoted cat man. His New York Times columns are always intelligent, thoughtful and well-written, which is more than can be said for those of some of his colleagues. And he clearly loves his cats. He and his wife, Robin, were photographed holding their cats - Albert Einstein and Doris Lessing - for a New Yorker profile. And when the news got out that Sarah Palin was not a fan of cats, Krugman quickly highlighted the abomination on his NYT blog. 

3) The self-hating cat man: Michael Showalter

The comedian, author of Sandwiches and Cats (a couple of our favorite things, too) and son of legendary feminist critic Elaine Showalter is a complicated cat man. He obviously loves him some cats, as evidenced in the multiple videos he creates in honor of his feline pals, including the poetic Cat Shoulders:

And yet he famously bitched out a lady who brought her two cats to one of his shows. But you know what - he sort of had a point.

4) The cat man of God: Pope Benedict XVI

We weren't so sure about the new pope at first. He was quite conservative and had that worrisome past as a Hitler Youth (although it seems that story is much less damning than it first appeared). But when we found out that Cardinal Ratzinger, aka Pope Benedict XVI, was a cat man, our fears subsided. Sure, we still wish he'd encourage more than just gigolos to use condoms, but any man who lets his authorized (children's) biography be written by a cat can't be too bad.

5) The cat man of letters: Samuel Johnson 

Dr. Johnson was a man of many accomplishments. He was a brilliant essayist, conversationalist and lexicographer. His 1755 Dictionary of the English Language is still regarded as one of the great works of English scholarship (it's all the more remarkable because he wrote the entire thing himself). He was also a progressive thinker, as evidenced by both his opposition to slavery and, of course, his love of cats. As Boswell - his famous biographer - reminisced: "I never shall forget the indulgence with which he treated Hodge, his cat: for whom he himself used to go out and buy oysters, lest the servants having that trouble should take a dislike to the poor creature." Now that's our kind of cat man!

And remember, folks: