What cats can teach us about consent

Does anyone else remember a viral tweet from years ago which claimed (please forgive my probably-poorly-paraphrasing from memory) that you should never trust a man who doesn’t like cats, because the likely reason he dislikes them is that cats are independent and don’t enjoy being touched without consent?

Like many tweets of this genre, I think this one contains some genuine wisdom and truth but has exaggerated the commonness of the phenomenon it describes. I think there are lots of reasons some men (and people of other genders) dislike cats. But I do think cats’ frequent insistence on their own bodily autonomy is one of them. Some people really don’t trust a creature they can’t control.