A decade or more ago I heard the term “otherkin” for the first time and subsequently have waited for an otherkin rights movement to start. There has been an on-line “community” for them since the 90’s, but it is a mixed bag of people who are pro-elf, elf-curious and beings that are part-unicorns, part-gryphon, part-dragon, angelic or a demon. There are combinations too so the otherkin “community” looks a lot like Yugoslavia in the 1970’s.

All of this sounds insane and it used to be considered as such, but we live in an age where the line between reality, insanity and fantasy is arbitrary. As soon as something is declared arbitrary it becomes a social construct and those are just about the worst things imaginable, except Hitler. He remains the worst, but social constructs and those yesterday men who traffic in them are down there with Hitler too.

Not to sound sanguine about it, but I’m old enough to remember when my general indifference to homosexuals was considered good form. I once hired an obviously gay man and my peers thought nothing of it. Not noticing or discussing it was just what you did. Now, my failure to celebrate it on Facebook, Twitter and the company e-mail system would probably get me sent off to sensitivity camp.

When you live in such a bizarre age, the bizarre feels normal. The lack of weird feels, well, weird. That’s why I think we’re going to see the otherkins finally get to fly their flag on the community piety pole. Stories like this one are just the first rumblings of what’s coming down the road.

We probably all feel a bit like a sleepy housecat when we have to get up for work in the morning.

This Norwegian woman has taken that feeling to the next level. Nano claims she realised she was a cat when she was 16 years old, and has adopted feline mannerisms since.

The 20-year-old has opened up about her life as a puss, describing how she has a superior sense of hearing and sight which allows her to hunt mice in the dark.

She made the revelation in a YouTube video, which has been viewed over 100,000 times.

Nano claims to possess many feline characteristics including a hatred of water and the ability to communicate simply by meowing.

That hatred of water would suggest that Nano smells like low tide by now. Judging from the pics, I’m guessing she has found a workaround.

The young woman shows off her cat characteristics by wearing fake ears and an artificial tail. She communicates by meowing.

“I realised I was a cat when I was 16 when doctors and psychologists found out what was “the thing” with me. Under my birth there was a genetic defect,” she explains in the video.

As they walked through Oslo’s central station, the presenter asked Nano what she could hear and see that a normal person might not.

“Suitcases rolling on the ground,” she says, “Keys clinking in pockets. People with ice under their shoes.”

Then all of a sudden, she lets out a hiss and takes a step back.

“There is a dog over there,” she explains. “Sometime I hiss when meeting dogs in the street. It’s because of their behaviour and my instinct automatically reacts by hissing.”

The cat woman wears a pair of pink fluffy paws with which to groom herself, and feels especially like doing so when she is in contact with water.

When asked if she was born as the wrong species, she said: “Yes, born in the wrong species.”

Anti-Otherkin bigots used to label these beings as mentally disturbed. There was a other-ist slur they used, clinical lycanthropy, claiming this was a form of delusion. We know now, at least you better soon know, that this is hate-think. What matters is what they think and we have to respect that. After all, if a man can wear a sundress and become a woman, a girl can put on a set of mouse ears and be a rodent.

This will present some complications. We had to go around and change the bathroom signage to accommodate the additional “genders” so I guess this means installing fire hydrants and litter boxes in the train stations for some of the otherkins. I’m not sure what sort of facilities elves, unicorns, gryphons, dragons, angelic or demons will need, but I’m pretty sure I would not want to follow the demon after his morning constitutional.

Otherkin Rights Now!