I don't know but it sure as hell hasn't got anything to do with Perl, however the documentation for man on my (Linux) system has a full explanation about what is going on:
CAT PAGES
Man will try to save the formatted man pages, in order to save formatting time the next time these pages are needed. Traditionally, formatted versions of pages in DIR/manX are saved in DIR/catX, but other mappings from man dir to cat dir can be specified in /etc/man.config. No
cat pages are saved when the required cat directory does not exist. No
cat pages are saved when they are formatted for a line length different
from 80. No cat pages are saved when man.conf contains the line
NOCACHE.
It is possible to make man suid to a user man. Then, if a cat directory
has owner man and mode 0755 (only writable by man), and the cat files
have owner man and mode 0644 or 0444 (only writable by man, or not
writable at all), no ordinary user can change the cat pages or put
other files in the cat directory. If man is not made suid, then a cat
directory should have mode 0777 if all users should be able to leave
cat pages there.
If you need further information I would suggest that you ask in a forum that is more appropriate to the system you are working on.
/J\
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