Yes there was actually a study done on this.
If you're a feline loving lad, a study has some weirdly specific potentially bad news for you...
Apparently, playing with cats makes a man less likely to be seen as a dating prospect by a woman.
That’s according to a study by Colorado State University, which found that women are less likely to swipe right to men if they’re posing with a cat in a picture.
To conduct the study, researchers showed women a total of 708 women aged between 18 and 24 hundreds of pictures of two men, one with a cat and one without.
And what they found was that men’s luck became worse when women saw the picture with a cat - so strange.
The findings.
“Men holding cats were viewed as less masculine; more neurotic, agreeable, and open; and less dateable,” the authors wrote.
When it came to the cat-free pictures, 38% of women said they were likely or very likely to casually date him, while 37% said they’d consider a serious relationship with him.
However those numbers dropped to 33% for each category when the men were pictured with cats.
Meanwhile, the proportion of women saying they’d never consider getting involved with him rose from 9% to 14%.
The findings are likely the result of long-held cultural stereotypes about cat and dog owners, the authors said.
“It is important to note that these findings were influenced by whether the female viewer self-identified as a ‘dog’ or ‘cat’ person, suggesting that American culture has distinguished ‘cat men’ as less masculine, perhaps creating a cultural preference for ‘dog men’ among most heterosexual women in the studied age group,” they wrote.
“Women prefer men with ‘good genes,’ often defined as more masculine traits,” they added, citing previous research. “Clearly, the presence of a cat diminishes that perception.”
We for one would never consider a cat lover to be a less date able prospect!
