Here is a small thought experiment. Imagine a conventionally handsome man. Now hand him a cat. Somehow, improbably, the charm ticks up. If your brain just did that math, you are not alone, and in the fall of 2025, that instinct got its own award.
People, the magazine behind the annual Sexiest Man Alive franchise, teamed up with the cat-treat brand Temptations to hand out a brand-new title: Sexiest Cat Dad. Four famous feline devotees were put forward as nominees: NBA center Myles Turner, actor Mark Ruffalo, actor and comedian Kumail Nanjiani, and actor Dave Franco. And on an October episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Franco, a longtime champion of his cats Max and Otis, was crowned the winner.
Franco took the honor with the self-deprecation you’d hope for, joking that he felt like he’d been quietly campaigning for it his whole life, and admitting he hadn’t clocked how unusual his cat obsession seemed until interviewers kept bringing it up.
The stunt is built on a real number
It would be easy to file this under harmless publicity, and it is partly that. But the premise isn’t invented. A survey conducted by KRC Research for Temptations found that half of respondents think men with cats make better romantic partners, and one in three believe male cat owners are more in touch with their feelings. Temptations’ marketing leadership framed the new category as overdue recognition for a group of men, athletes, musicians, gamers, and academics alike, who’ve been quietly irresistible all along.
This wasn’t the brand’s first swing at the theme, either. Earlier in 2025, Temptations put Love Island alum Kordell Beckham, shirtless and holding his cat Milo, on a billboard in Times Square. Beckham has said he trained Milo using the brand’s treats, and that being a cat dad adds a certain something to a guy’s appeal. Temptations then went further, writing an open letter urging People to formally add the category to its Sexiest Man Alive coverage. The magazine agreed, replying, more or less, that true sexiness is about compassion and responsibility as much as looks, and that a man confident enough to stand tall beside a kitty condo has clearly figured that out.
Franco’s win landed in the readers’ choice edition alongside a slate of other tongue-in-cheek categories, from sexiest tattoos to sexiest podcaster.
Why “cat guy” stopped being an insult
The reason the joke works is that the old stereotype has quietly flipped. Cats were long coded as a woman’s pet, and a single man with a cat was a punchline. That framing is aging out. Adoption data has been pointing to more men bringing cats home, and the culture has caught up, treating a man’s tenderness toward a small, opinionated animal as a green flag rather than a red one.
Which is the actual takeaway buried in a treat brand’s marketing campaign: caring openly for an animal reads, to a lot of people, as emotional competence. You don’t need a magazine to certify it. But if you’re a cat dad who’s spent years being gently teased for talking to your cat in a special voice, consider this your official vindication, print issue and all.
