It is not in the least surprising that so many of us are preoccupied with the eternal question, 'Are cats delusional?'

So much of what they do points to one or more categories of delusional disorder and even behaviours that don't fit neatly into one box or another are highly suspect. They commune with entities in the walls that we cannot see. They frequently believe themselves more adored than they are. And, most prevalent, they believe they are being tormented by invisible forces - consider all those times the cat has been seen careening wildly around the house as though the hounds of hell were after it when not even the family dog was chasing it.

Though delusional disorders and cats are both real, there is nothing to suggest the two have met. It turns out that what is normal for a cat is not necessarily so for us.

A delusion represents an inability to differentiate between what is real and what is not.

Delusions can be symptoms of psychotic disorders like schizophrenia. They are also linked to substance abuse, bipolar disorder, dementia and delirium. It is not uncommon for delusions to manifest in one of these conditions. Actual delusional disorder is less prevalent.

These are not diagnoses we are inclined to take lightly. And someone not playing nicely with reality may seem like an easy thing to spot.

And yet, not necessarily. Something is not a delusion if it fits within the individual's cultural or religious beliefs.

I always believed that we could learn a lot about acceptance from psychiatry. It's simple and obvious, isn't it, the religion-and-culture-context thing? While being simultaneously slightly impossible to grasp. It's almost too big an idea.

Remember the cat. You may not run hysterically about the house or talk to inanimate objects without causing concern to those around you. But we accept that that is the way of cats. That is catness. That is not humanness or Trinidadianness or Tobagonianness or earthlingness.

'Delusion' is one of those words that gets thrown around very casually. Vaxxers are delusional. Anti-vaxxers are delusional. Environmental activists are delusional. Climate-change sceptics are delusional. Essentially, if someone doesn't agree with you, you think it's ok to say they're not trafficking in reality.

This is not a thing. Let's stop making it a thing.

The morning you wake up and someone in your family tells you he's a school bus and he doesn't have all day to wait for you, so hurry up, then you know you have troubles of the delusional kind. Then you may ask if it's appropriate to use the word.

When one of your friends thinks she has birthed the messiah (even though she wasn't even pregnant), then it is possible you may use the word.

If you don't think someone looks good in a green dress and they think they do, or you don't think someone deserves a promotion but they think they do, they are not delusional. You are judgmental.

Then, because all of this was already so simple, we add over-valued ideas to the mix. These fall short of the clinical definition