Despite being constitutionally more of a hamster person—we miss you, Lady Godiva—we were struck first by the cuteness of Design Observer’s “Cats and Their Designers” feature, in which forty-three designers (four of them split into couples) sent in pictures of themselves with their cats. And second by our desire to be morning statisticians. Walk with us, as we work it all out. Most striking was taking a quick-and-slideshow immediate cross-section (helpfully microcosmically illustrated in the shot above, of Cara McKinley and Austin Happel, holding Blue and Mochi) of the design world, and the most striking from that was that only ten pairs of funny glasses were seen.

That’s a 23% breakdown right there, which is unusually low for what we might have expected given how frequently our funny glasses lead people to assume we might have some sort of design sensibility (false), or want to spend a lot of time on Weimar cinema (double false.) Following on yesterday’s intrigue re: gender, we thought we’d count up girls vs. boys but out of 43—and remember, this is self-selected so no beef with Design Observer—there are 21 guys. Either the kind of designers—mostly graphic, less architectural—that tend to read Design Observer are more equal, or stereotypes run free and girls are more into their cats, thus being more likely to send in a picture of themselves cuddling with their cat, thus bringing the numbers up to something approaching equal.

Points for best names go to Mies (of course), Inspector Clouseau, Rob Carmichael’s Maximum Cat, and Louise Sandhouse’s Monotone. Overall, pictures of people who do something related to design holding their cats may not be quite the litmus test of total equality we occasionally pray for, but for now, we’ll take it. It’s better than the lolmeme.

Cats and Their Designers [Design Observer]