They are just like feeling people --- they sense when they are welcome in your environment. Dogs don't seem to pay much attention to that sense, however.

Cats like beer you know! Better put a lock on that. :)

They know me too. It's always been that way, since I was a child.

Some sort of feline intuition, I guess.

We have a calico, Feliz, who knows who likes cats and who doesn't. Sometimes she knows who likes cats before the person knows it! A neighbor who has never had a pet because they are messy and shed, came in the house and Feliz immediately sat down on her shoes. I was horrified, the neighbor thought she was being given a high honor, and Feliz likes suede! Our neighbor thinks having a cat might not be all that bad.
However, we also had a cat, Sampson C., who would immediately crawl all over anyone who didn't like cats! He would sit on their laps and when ejected sit on their feet and purr. He'd give them "kitty looks" that would melt their heart, and if that didn't work, he'd bring them a toy to play with. It worked every time!

When I first started dating my (now) husband, my cats converged on him like paper on a wall. He was not a cat lover. They kneeded dough on his trousers, pulling strands of fiber lose, LOL. On his lap. In his face. He married me and accepted my dogs and cats anyway.

It took a long time for him to soften, but soften he did and got his first cats of a life-time. I would have never guessed he would end up loving and even crying when we lost them over the years....but somehow they knew.

Do they sense this and if so, how do they know I have a soft spot for them?

Well, lets see..We the cat people are likely to have food in the garden or likely to offer food to a strange cat.

We are likely not to shoo a cat away, spray it from a water hose, or try to trap it and take to Animal Services...

We the cat people are likely to have other cats in the yard, for others to get an idea and to stick around (why are feral cat colonies near the dumpster? :))

My husband is not exactly a cat person, but all my cats and fosters want to sit on his lap. I do not think he possess any supernatural cat powers - I think his calm demeanor and his "no strings attached" response (I will pet you if you want but you do not have to stick around) is more of a reason. He is patient, and for the same reasons mentioned, friends' and relatives' kids love to climb all over him.

On the contrary, one of my relatives LOVES cats and has 7 of them, but when a cat jumps on her lap, she wants to cuddle it to death - no cat is sticking around for that....

I am sure there are more reasons why cats hang out and come to cat people...

I love cats and have a lot of them, but I am too pragmatic (I am a Computer Scientist!) to look for special "cat attracting" powers beyond the aparent love and calm and care we give to our animals...

Cats, like dogs, are able to sense the energy people give out.

Humans aren't that good at that as we are all too busy blabbing our lips too much, so human animals no longer recognize the energy from others.

But in the animal kingdom, everything is about energy levels. Extreme energy levels in either direction are not liked. A medium easy going calm and collected energy at all times, is most preferred by all animals.

But I myself do notice that there are certain people that have this calm energy, that both dogs and cats love too and we are drawn to those people.

No one likes upset, excitable, angry, on edge, tense, out of control, sad all the time, stressed, screamers, yellers, laughing too loud, screechers, crying, drama, types of people.

Dogs and cats are the same way, they are drawn to people with a calm energy force at all times and they prefer to stay around those people.

Read some great articles on this at DogSTARspace.com too many to copy them all here for you.

Hope this helps.

Here is a link that might be useful: DogSTARspace

I like cats and dogs both. The way cats react to me, I think, is more of an expression of how they are treated by their masters. I shoo cats out of my yard because of my dogs (they would damage my dogs of they had a chance) but I never do evil things to them like throw rocks at them or turn the water on them. This reminds me of when I was a kid, my neighbors had a big yellow tabby that always layed in their front yard. He would attack anyone who came into the yard. He was so bad, the mailman refused to deliver mail to them. I went there several times because because the girl who lived there was cute, but that cat would scratch the heck out of me. I would try to avoid it but the cat wasn't having that. Soon as anyone set foot in that front yard; BOOM. That cat had no fear.