Maybe your Claire is as tiny as my Paulinchen was. She was the smallest cat I ever had but all the other cats respected her especially the big tom cats, three times as big and heavy than my little grl was. Size doesn't matter, Claire is a treasure. :)
I'm so used to it now, that l forget how small she is. I was at a Petsmart the other day buying her some more of those little soccer balls, and decided to check out the adoption center. My first reaction when I saw the cats was "good lord...what sort of genetic mutation produced these freakishly huge behemoths"??? Then I realized that they were just average sized, and it was Claire that wasn't!