“I call him my boyfriend because he loves me,” a young woman said, describing her relationship with her cat, Chester.

“Cats are the non-prescription anti-depressant,” another woman explained.

This is Cat Ladies, a documentary by Toronto’s Christie Callan-Jones, about cats and the women that love them.

It begins light, with these proud cat lovers defending themselves against the unfair label some members of society have given them.

“Just because a single woman has cats, doesn’t mean she’s a crazy cat lady,” one woman argued.

What Callan-Jones is interested in here is less the cats and more the psychology of why they attract these women.

On the surface, these female subjects from different places and lifestyles seem quite normal. They are friendly and confident, if a little shy. Some have cats from pet stores and some rescue them from the street.

But as we are drawn deeper into this world, where the subjects’ cat ownership varies from five cats to, astoundingly, over a hundred, these characters’ struggles with loneliness, depression and family and relational abuse become cuttingly real.

It’s clear Callan-Jones cares deeply about these subjects and it becomes impossible not to empathize also.

This makes Winnipeg filmmaker Shereen Jerrett’s Dog Stories a surprising contrast.

The film is simple: Local dog owners telling stories about their favoured pets. What’s surprising is how hilarious these stories – and subjects – actually are.

One man tells of his blind affection for his childhood dog, which he also describes as “probably the worst pet anyone has owned.”

Another man describes his pet as “the smartest dog in the world” because, as he shows us, his dog knows how to play baseball.

Probably the funniest moment is the near-painful scene of a woman making her poodles dance for cheese while singing “dancey dancey” over and over and over.

But, near the film’s close, as one man describes the emotional experience of taking his childhood pet on his last trip to the vet, it becomes evident that beneath the ridiculousness of these pets stories, there is also heart.

Published in Volume 64, Number 5 of The Uniter (October 1, 2009)