I come to you today in defense of childless cat ladies across this (still) great land, a group that includes my wife. And of childless cat gentlemen, if that’s the word, a group that includes me.
All have been insulted by J.D. Vance, the one-time Trump critic (“my god what an idiot,” “unfit for our nation’s highest office”) turned ring-kisser (“an incredible fighter for hard-working Americans”). His political allegiances are clearly mutable.
Less so, apparently, are his views on feline companions and progeny. On Tucker Carlson’s show, Vance lashed out at a class of people he disdains.
“We are effectively run in this country ... by a bunch of childless cat ladies who 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,” he said in 2021, while a candidate for the Senate from Ohio.
“It’s just a basic fact. You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children.”
(A couple of actual basic facts here: Harris is stepmother to two adult children who call her Momala. Buttigieg and his husband have adopted twins. I don’t know if any of them have cats, but I hope they do.)
With Vance’s ascent to the No. 2 slot on the Republican presidential ticket, and Harris’s presumed rise to No. 1 on the Democratic side, the insult has gained new life.
Pushback has been swift, and Swift. Fans of the singer Taylor Swift note with irritation that the term applies to their idol. And Nikki Barnes, a former member of the Democratic National Committee from Florida, tweeted a “Childless cat ladies for Harris 2024” image that got millions of views. T-shirts with the slogan are already available.
But is it really an insult?
I have no quarrel with people who choose to reproduce. We need new generations as a society. I need them for continued funding of my Social Security checks every month. And as the Shaker religious community demonstrated, a group that forswears offspring has a hard time keeping its membership rolls stocked.
Still, the suggestion that childless cat people are miserable is laughable. How could we be when much of our time is spent watching hilarious cat videos on the internet? And when much of the rest is spent with smartphones in hand tailing our own cats, hoping to catch them doing something hilarious that we can turn into viral content?
I confess, none of our succession of cats have ever provided such content. Our current pair’s activities consist almost entirely of sleeping, eating and drinking, and doing the things that result from eating and drinking. With occasional nuzzling and lap-sitting to indicate their perhaps grudging acceptance of us as their housemates.
But every time we go away for an extended period and attend to their welfare simply by hiring a sitter who comes by every couple of days, I think, yeah, try doing that with a toddler.
I do believe in limiting the number of cats in residence to no more than three, preferably two. Otherwise, there’s a slippery slope that can quickly lead to 29 of them underfoot, with resulting unhygienic conditions for all concerned.
But it’s not just the cat factor that gets Vance’s goat. He thinks childless people – even if also catless – don’t deserve the full benefits of citizenship.
Also in 2021, speaking to the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute, he suggested this: “Let’s give votes to all children in this country, but let’s give control over those votes to the parents of those children. When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power – you should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic – than people who don’t have kids.”
I dissent.
Sure, there are trade-offs for choosing cats over children. Cats will never make the middle school honor roll, grow up to become doctors or mechanics or famous athletes, or look after us in our old(er) age. But they’ll also never embarrass us by writing tell-all books disparaging their hillbilly kin.
Or becoming Trumpers.
Joe Rogers is a former writer for The Tennessean and editor for The New York Times. He is retired and living in Nashville. He can be reached at [email protected]