What is a cat lady, and why are they making headlines?

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U.S. Senator J.D. Vance, who is former president Donald Trump’s running mate in the presidential race, is facing backlash after referring to Vice President Kamala Harris as a childless cat lady in a recently resurfaced interview.

The video, reportedly from 2021, shows Vance speaking to Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson. Since being posted on X, one version of the video has been viewed almost 30 million times.

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“We’re effectively run in this country — be it Democrats, be it via our corporate oligarchs — by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they made,” Vance said.

“They want to make the rest of the country miserable, too. And it’s just a basic fact, if you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children and how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”

So, what exactly is a cat lady?

A cat lady is a term used today to designate a woman with more than one cat, who is likely unmarried and doesn’t have children. It has been used to purposely insult or poke fun at such women. According to a definition in the Cambridge Dictionary, a cat lady is a “a woman who has a lot of cats, especially a woman who lives alone and is considered to be slightly strange.”

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In popular culture, depictions of so-called cat ladies have been less than kind. Take Eleanor Abernathy, better known as the “crazy cat lady” in The Simpsons television series. She is an extreme example of the term, perpetually unkempt, usually yelling, and always holding (sometimes throwing) a handful of cats.

Another well-known cat lady in popular culture is Angela Martin from the American television series The Office. Martin is obsessed with her many cats. She sets up a camera in her home to watch them from work and even goes so far as to groom one with her tongue.

However, in recent years, it has become a badge of honour rather than an insult, especially among young women who are choosing to remain unmarried or opting to not have children. Social media has become full of videos of women explaining that they are “childless cat ladies” by choice.

Singer Taylor Swift has often proclaimed that she is, indeed, a cat lady. She posed on the cover of Time Magazine with one her cats in 2023. She is known to travel with her feline companions and said she was inspired by her pets to take a role in the film Cats, she told Time in 2019.

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Who has weighed in?

Vance’s comment gained more attention when actress Jennifer Aniston — who had previously opened up about her struggles with infertility — reposted the video clip of the Fox News interview.

“I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of the United States,” wrote Aniston on an Instagram story.

“All I can say is… I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day. I hope she will not need to turn to IVF as a second option. Because you are trying to take that away from her, too.”

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Buttigieg, the U.S. secretary of transportation who now has two children, was also named by Vance along with Ocasio-Cortez and Harris. Buttigieg responded in an interview on CNN on July 24.

“The really sad thing is he said that after (my husband) Chasten and I had been through a fairly heartbreaking setback in our adoption journey,” said Buttigieg. “He couldn’t have known that, but maybe that’s why you shouldn’t be talking about other people’s children.”

The ex-wife of Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff also came to her defence. Kerstin Emhoff told CNN that Harris has been a co-parent to her two children for more than 10 years.

“She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective, and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it,” said Emhoff.

Comedian Chelsea Handler posted a video reaction to Vance’s comments on social media. She pointed out that the first U.S. president George Washington didn’t have his own biological children.

“And to your point about Kamala not being fit because she’s not a ‘mother,’ I’d like to remind you that no president in the history of the United States has ever been a mother,” she said in a post on X.

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On Monday, in an interview with Fox News, Trump spoke in support of Vance.

“He’s not against anything, but he loves family. It’s very important to him,” said Trump. “He grew up in a very interesting family situation, and he feels family is good and I don’t think there’s anything wrong in saying that.”

After facing backlash, Vance seemed to double down in an interview on the Megyn Kelly Show on July 26.

“The simple point that I made is that having children, becoming a father, becoming a mother, I really think it changes your perspective in a profound way,” he said.

“It’s not a criticism of people who don’t have children…This is about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child.”

How far back does the connection go?

Cats were domesticated roughly 10,000 years ago, according to an article in Scientific American, sparking a long relationship between humans and the feline creatures. Although they were once revered (for example in Ancient Egypt), cats became vilified in the 12th century when they were associated with the devil. They became symbols of “lasciviousness, pride, envy, treachery and the very devil himself,” in Medieval Europe, per The Guardian.

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Not only that, but an association was made between women, most often accused of witchcraft, and these furry pets.

“People increasingly came to believe that witches — in particular, women — had the ability to shape-shift into cats, or used them and other animal ‘familiars’ to do their bidding,” per NPR.

In North America, this culminated in the Salem witch trials in the 17th century. Cats were seen as the companions of witches, and thus were also hunted and sentenced to death along with women, The Stute reported.

By the 19th century, the idea that there was a connection between “old maids” or “spinsters” and cats was solidified,  having been written about in various publications, NPR reported.

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