Cat don’t matter. What matters is that the human brain really isn’t geared towards long term threat. Especially if they’re vague and out of our control. Short term easily identified threats, like a wild animal, or a fire, we’re good at that. But long term and vague, forget about it. Like during the Cold War, how much did we really worry about getting nuked? Sure every once in a while a news report or movie or something would stir it up and people would be uptight for a while. But eventually we always reset to “meh” and went on with our lives. Happens with every plague too. AIDS, herpes, Spanish Flu, Black Death. Humanity always lands on “meh”.
The reason for that is we as humans cannot stay in crisis mode indefinitely. It’s mentally and emotionally impossible. I think it is a natural survival mechanism.
Our “rulers” are trying to get around that natural defense mechanism by changing the nature of the crisis when people get burned out on the current one. Hence the convenient timing of the new “we’ve got to eliminate your liberties to save you” disease.