This essay A Man and His Cat by Tim Kreider (NYT // 2014.08.01) is worth the full read if you want to try understand that guy with the cat, which is basically me.

Some notable excerpts:

I lived with the same cat for 19 years — by far the longest relationship of my adult life.

I realize that people who talk at length about their pets are tedious at best, and often pitiful or repulsive. They post photos of their pets online, tell little stories about them, speak to them in disturbing falsettos…

This is especially true of childless people, like me, who tend to become emotionally overinvested in their animals and to dote on them in a way that gives onlookers the creeps.

…people have a certain reservoir of affection that they need to express, and in the absence of any more appropriate object — a child or a lover, a parent or a friend — they will lavish that same devotion on a [pet].

A man who is in a room with a cat — whatever else we might say about that man — is not alone.