grammar - 私は猫が好き and 猫は私が好き

^{I'm an absolute beginner. I've learned Japanese in my spare time for less than two months. This is my first question here. Even though I think this question is potentially trivial, it's perhaps the best to ask it here anyway. Be gentle with me, please. :)}

I started reading basic grammar of Japanese, and found this sentence:

ねこがすきです。

I like cats.

I thought が is the subject particle, so I supposed that ねこ would be the subject of the sentence. すき seems to mean "like". So I expected ねこがすきです to mean "Cats like me" rather than "I like cats"; however, it seems like "I like cats" is the correct meaning, as another example バナナが好きだ (I like bananas) in the mentioned dictionary entry also has the same structure.

I asked another learner and got this phrase (私は)猫が好き as the full version of ねこがすきです. However, this confuses me even further, because somehow I understand it as "Cats, I like" (and probably "Me, cats like"). And I think no matter how strange it means, it's still a perfectly fine sentence.

How should I understand these two following sentences? Which one means "I like cats" and which one means "Cats like me"?

1) 私は猫が好き
2) 猫は私が好き

_{よろしくおねがいします！}

Answer

Particles have multiple uses or meanings. が can be used to mark the subject. However 好き【すき】 is an adjective not a verb. In this case が marks the target of 好き【すき】 which is cats.

1) 私は猫が好き

2) 猫は私が好き

The pattern of these sentences is: Topic は target of adjective が adjective

1. I(topic) like(adjective) cats(target of adjective).


2. Cats(topic) like(adjective) me(target of adjective).