Why is ‘Cat Person’ going viral again?

The literary sensation from 2017 is trending again. But this time it's because of a real-life story

Helen, I am seeing that awful close-up picture of mouths kissing on my timeline again and hesitate to ask, but why?

The short story Cat Person is in the news once more, because a woman named Alexis Nowicki has written an essay for Slate in which she explains that she is the real-life cat person the Cat Person story is based on, and that her ex-boyfriend is the other cat person in the story, and that he was actually a lovely person in real life and really did have cats and wasn't pretending, unlike in the story.