A whopping quarter of the adult population of the UK today are cat owners. Perhaps more surprising is that 10% more men than women have cats. There’s no particular reason why women should have any more reason to have a cat than men – they don’t – but when society thinks about pussycats and their adoring owners, our minds turn to one thing: the cat lady. We can thank pop culture for that… but it doesn’t stop there.

I recently listened to a fabulous episode on The Guardian’s ‘Today in Focus’ podcast, entitled Revenge of the childless cat ladies. Now, don’t get me wrong, political pieces aren’t usually where I get my daily dose of the feline 411, but I was struck by how critical cats are to our current politics.

After (absolutely vital) introductions to the speakers’ cats – including Roly, the yellow-eyed, tiny-brained bundle of fluff (aw) – the podcast peers into both the current and historical symbolism of cats within society, with a particularly fascinating focus on the ‘crazy cat lady’… and what it means to be one.

I’m sure everyone’s heard of Senator J.D. Vance – the ‘gift that keeps on giving’ – Trump’s vice president-elect. Like any American politician, he’s a controversial guy, and say what you will about him, but there is one undeniable truth: the man has a thing about cat ladies. Let’s have a look at what he’s had to say.

Interviews with Vance from 2021 have recently sprung back into popular media. On Fox News, Vance claimed that “we are effectively run in this country […] by a bunch of childless cat ladies”. As such, the Democrats, to him, “are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too”.

To me, this is quite a shocking statement – not only in its obvious intentions – but in the fact Vance assumes anything miserable about being a single woman with a cat! I’m happy to confirm that his comments got some serious cat-loving backlash, most significant being Taylor Swift signing off her endorsement of Harris-Walz on Instagram as ‘Childless Cat Lady’. One X user reposted a photo from a shoot with TIME magazine, where Taylor has her ragdoll cat Benjamin Button proudly adorning her shoulders, with the comment: ‘hell hath no fury like a certain childless cat lady who has yet to endorse a presidential candidate’. How brilliant.

It’s safe to say articles all about cats and their ladies have sprung up all over the internet. They trace cats’ domestication to the ancient Egyptians around 10,000 years ago and the reverence of their goddess Bastet to stories of Artemis’ feline metamorphosis as she runs from a giant monster in Greek mythology. Cats are also important to various Asian mythologies, particularly associated with fertility and protection. Later on, the Witch Trials in America tyrannised women with small, domesticated pets – or little ‘demons’ – seen as surrogates in the absence of motherhood.

Transforming into contemporary culture, the ’crazy cat lady’ is a long-established pop-culture archetype of a batty, single, and childless woman who obsesses over her fifty fluffy felines in desperate response to her lack of ‘normal’ social accomplishments. Particularly interesting are the ongoing links between cats and female sexuality in pop culture and politics. Journalist Akanksha Singh does a deep dive into the paradoxes of the cat-female relationship in Western culture. Funny that a woman described as a cat emphasises her provocative nature – we’ve all heard discussions of the “purr[ing]” “sex kittens” – yet this is like chalk and cheese to the other imagery. In other words, a woman is a cat? Great. But if she has one? Nope. Hopeless cat lady.

It makes you think! I mean, compare cool, commanding Cat Woman with Angela from The Office. What about Marvel’s Tigra with the Simpson’s Crazy Cat Lady? There’s nothing sexy about all the pink-rimmed pussycat plates hung up on Dolores Umbridge’s wall in Harry Potter.

On top of all of this, cats are a bit of a cinematic staple to contemporary male characters – villains. These range from the smarmy, polished Vito Corleone or Ernst Stavro Blofeld to the whimsical caricatures of Dr. Evil and Gargamel. So why is ‘crazy cat lady’ still the big buzzword? I reckon it all comes down to sex and power.

Happily, the trope is tiring. We’re starting to see some serious cat lady empowerment. Taylor is a massive trailblazer in this arena, but she’s not the only one. Felix, a cat insurance company, is promising to ‘Make “Cat Lady” Cool’, while thousands of pet owners all over the world have been celebrating National Cat Lady Day on April 19th since 2017 – seriously, you can check out the threads here!

In the podcast, presenter Helen Pidd pretty much sums up the journey that cat lovers are on today.

Image of podcaster and presenter Helen Pidd

‘Yes, I’m a cat lady, there I said it. I might have hesitated to out myself like this in public not so long ago, but recently, something changed. I started to see being a childless cat lady not as a source of shame but as a badge of honour. And I’m not the only one…’

Perhaps Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) Holly Golightly embodies a shift in the Western stereotype of the cat lady, subverting a woman on-the-go into something modern and emancipating:

“I’m like Cat here, a no-name slob. We belong to nobody, and nobody belongs to us. We don’t even belong to each other”.

While there’s a lot to unpack about how cats’ meanings have and will evolve over the past, present, and future – from Common Era divinity to constitutional divisions – the reality is that the cat ladies are bringing out their claws. In other words, what an exciting time to own a cat!