The cat from my childhood was generally deeply relaxed. He usually lay in his rocking chair and dozed, hardly noticing visitors.

So no problem for our neighbor with a cat phobia, who had announced that she was going to have a coffee party with my mother one afternoon. The cat wouldn't pay any attention to the woman.

we thought. Until the portly black fellow got out of his rocking chair in the middle of the women's coffee session, headed for a certain person and hopped on her lap. It was that neighbor who was afraid of cats.

The behavior of our pet, which was embarrassing from our point of view, was - in retrospect - to be expected. It often happens that cats are attracted to precisely those people who want nothing to do with animals.

Advice on how to behave in order to win the heart of cats is plentiful. One of them is not to be too pushy with the animals and let them decide whether they want to have contact or not. Researchers even found out that, of all people, declared cat lovers often do a lot wrong when dealing with the idiosyncratic animals.

But what to do if you want to avoid contact with a cat? And why do the animals often choose exactly those people who don't like them to express their sympathy?

The biologist Dennis C. Turner explains the behavior in a conversation with the star using the example of a group of people who are in a room with a cat: "People who like cats show it clearly," says the Swiss-American , who has researched, among other things, the relationship between humans and domestic cats. "For example, you are looking for contact with the animal or you want to pet it."

However, people with fear did not emit such signals. confusing for the animal. "The cat needs to determine - what about this person?" explains Turner. "That's why they force the contact."

The scientist confirms that it is a well-known phenomenon that cats select exactly those people from a group of people for advance attempts who would rather be spared. That is very typical of the animals.

Translated into the time of the legendary coffee party in our family, that would probably have meant not letting the hangover into the living room in the first place. Then he wouldn't have wanted to research what he felt was wrong with the woman with a cat phobia - and he wouldn't have jumped on her lap either.

Sources: Institute for Applied Ethology and Animal Psychology by Dennis C. Turner, "Die Welt", "The Battersea Way" on Youtube

Read at stern: They all had four legs, some very short, others elegantly long. From Corgi puppies to Arabian stallions, animals populated the Queen's palaces and grounds. A very special love story.