Using CI with traditional PHP Objects

[eluser]prezet[/eluser]
As this is a simplified example assume I have a model called cats_model.php with the following method, which returns an associate array of the cats data

Code:

function get_cats( )
{
    $result = FALSE;
                
    $query = $this->db->query('SELECT * FROM cats');
        
    foreach( $query->result_array() as $row )
    {
        $result[] = $row;
    }
        
    return $result;
}

so in my controller I use:

Code:

function mycats
{
   // Load Model
    $this->load->model('cats_model');
    
    // Get Class
    require_once APPPATH . '/classes/Cat.php';

    $cats = array();

    if( $cats_data = $this->cats_model->get_cats() )
    {                
        foreach($cats_data as $cat_data)
    {            
        $cats[] = new Cat($cat_data['cat_id']);
    }
    }

    // Do something with the cats array of objects etc...
    
}

So I pass each ID into the Cat class, which then grabs the data from the database related to that ID. Or at least thats the plan. I haven't actually written that class yet.

The Cat object just has simple methods like get_cat_name(), set_cat_name(), get_cat_colour() etc... nothing elaborate. But assume I have multiple cat entries in my database i.e. one for a ginger cat called Molly and one for a black cat called Sam...

I'm assuming I'm not doing it the correct CI way, so any advice on how to structure this would be helpful.