It's maybe not the ground-breaking research you were hoping for today (when are we going to get more funding for endometriosis studies guys?) but according to a new study: crazy cat ladies don't actually exist.
That's right, you can stop tagging your friends in those Facebook posts, buying cute ironic notebooks and liking Instagram memes that are about staying at home, doing nothing and communicating solely with your Bengal: it turns out crazy cat ladies aren't crazy after all. According to a new study carried out by the University of California, people who own cats didn't report suffering any social or mental health problems than those who owned dogs or not at all.
This is something I've suspected for a while: one of the happiest three months of my life was when I was looking after my flatmates' two cats while she was away and one of them unexpectedly birthed three kitten - at which point the jokes about the fact that I was single and co-habiting with five cats came in thick and fast.
But if anything, looking after three infant cats and their two parents was the making of me. Overnight, my life went from drinking four nights a week, going on dates out of a sense of obligation and being strong-armed into late nights out to vets appointments, kitten-food supermarket dashes and some weird google searches about weaning.
Sure: outwardly I rolled my eyes whenever I cancelled another drink because 'the kittens need feeding' or had to dash out of a party early, secretly, going home and sitting on the sofa with 6 pairs of goggle-eyes was my favourite part of the day.
The responsibility to look after three unexpected fluffballs that came into my life meant that I couldn't simply fill - what I realised was becoming a bit of a limitless void - with alcohol, a housewarming party and a quick session on a dating app.
Given millennials are estimated to have more mental health problems than previous generations (in 2019 approximately one in four people in the UK will experience a mental health problem) we're starting to do away with harmful stereotypes, but 'crazy cat lady' has stuck fast as shorthand for someone who is chronically single with an underwear drawer full of Bridget Knickers.
There's nothing wrong with either of those things, but for me, the onus to care about something other than my own life was critically stabilising. My cats - all five of them - temporarily forced me to be less selfish about my London life and my happiness multiplied accordingly while my stress levels plummeted. So far from shunning the possibility of being a cat lady, maybe we should all be giving it a go...