To Wed and Settle or to be a Cat Lady?

Every year right around Christmas, we visit my 3rd cousin, Janie. Janie isn't a close relative. We only see her around Christmas, or my Mom will see her at a wake if some distant relative I've never met dies. Janie is damn near seventy years old, if not in her seventies, and gets around better than my mother, who is fifty with a bad case of arthritis. When you think of the prototypical "old lady" the odds are good that you would envision this woman. She lives alone in a little rasied ranch in Coventry with the two cats she adopted from a woman who was about to send them to the pound. Her eyeglasses take up most of her face. Janie doesn't drive her Buick after dark. She feeds birds and even leaves corn cobs out on the porch for the squirrels.
In this woman's life, I see where I could possibly end up in my own life. I joke about being an old lady who lives with cats, but as I get older, pickier and it seems that I am going to spend my entire life without bringing a boyfriend home for the family to meet. I don't pity Janie at all. She's done so much in her life that I'm probably never going to catch up. Janie was a teacher and got to travel the world. Even now, in her damn near seventies, she voulenteers three days a week at the hospital gift shop and just got back from a safari in Africa. Yes, this woman took a photo safari to Africa with her sister and neice. In her seventies.
My grandfather's explanation for the extensive travels Janie's had is that "educated people" want to travel more. I don't think it's bad to want to get out, get away and see something you could never experience where you live. It makes you appreciate other places more and love the place you're in more.
My Mom always thinks of Janie as the cool older cousin that she'd see around the holidays and would give her Nancy Drew mysteries to read at Christmas. I think my Mom puts such a large value on our little family that she can't imagine living a life without the experience of being married and having kids. My Mom's eyes lit up at the mention of a safari, of having no fear of going someplace you've only read about. But I can see myself following in Janie's footsteps. "Nobody was good enough for Janie to marry," my Mom tells me. "Her sister had the professor, and Janie could never get a catch that good for herself." My own family seems to think that I'm going to spend the majority of my life alone. My grandmother says she doesn't see me being married until I'm 40. Maybe I won't get married. What's the point of settling for someone you don't want? As long as you have a life outside of yourself and people to love you, does it matter if you're married or not? Janie always has someone to watch her cats when she travels, someone to visit with during Christmas and is always has stories about what she does all year.
But I wonder if Janie wonders what it would be like to be like my Mom. To have two kids and to have at least known being in love with a man enough to marry him and bear his children. I wonder if she would trade in all the pictures of lions and zebras to have a house full of pictures of a family of her own, with kids who have her blue eyes behind glasses and a man good enough for her to love. Which is the better way? And will I know before it's too late to have it both ways?