Lena Dunham replaced her friends with a "posse" of cats after moving to London

In a piece for Vanity Fair magazine, Lena wrote: "I found myself nearly 35, noticing the hours that, back home, had been full of the noisy disharmony of family and friends were now ticked by the noise of watching other people argue with their friends - on The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, on Dubai Bling, and on TikTok, of course - until I started to feel dense with toxic sludge where my blood should be.

"I had colleagues and acquaintances. But friends - a group of people that define films like Four Weddings and a Funeral, or any movie where Hugh Grant is inexplicably platonic besties with a woman who has a grown-out pixie cut - I did not have."

She went on to explain she soon realised adopting cats would help her build a new social circle at home.

Lena added: "Like any good cat lady, I realized: We may all be human, but who says our friends have to be? Just like there's always a backstabbing, troublemaking entity in any reality TV girl gang, a cat brings the side-eye, the discontent, the flare for the dramatic. My husband, Luis, and I were already living with two dogs, Ingrid (California Gurl) and Cornichon (Welsh).

"I figured I could build a friend group as dynamic in its range as any of the ones I was following, replete with the hot girl, the slattern, the upwardly mobile homosexual, the token straight guy, and the business b****."

After adopting their first cat, Elegance, Lena and Luis ended up giving homes to four more - Rhett, Truman, Smudge and Portia - to give her a "posse of five".

The TV star went on to admit she struggles with feelings of anxiety when letting her cats roam the neighbourhood, but she eventually learned to accept it.

She added: "If allowing the cats out gives me anxiety, it was only as much as having friends ever did. I had always felt a terror of abandonment and a curiosity about how everyone else seemed to sustain their relationships with so much less anxiety than I did.

"But the best thing I could do for my cats would be to treat them with the laughing acceptance, nurturing warmth, and unerring flexibility I hoped to be granted in my own life.

"They had all come out, as a friend once said of children, 'exactly as they're going to be'."