Amusing cat videos, long a Facebook staple, are now ubiquitous, and the phrase “childless cat lady” comes up incessantly. Two of my favorite examples of the recent cat craze are the column “Nation’s Cats Lash Out at J.D. Vance,” by Andy Borowitz, and a painting of Frida Kahlo surrounded by tuxedo cats, seen online, for which I can find no attribution.

I gathered, from social media posts defending the current U.S. vice president, Kamala Harris, that she had just been singled out for defamation as a “childless cat lady” by the Republican vice presidential candidate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH).

I looked up “cat lady,” and was surprised to see that it is sometimes used to refer to any childless woman past childbearing age, whether or not she has any cats.

I was also surprised to discover that Vance made the cat lady remark, not after Harris became the Democratic candidate for president, but back in July, 2021, during an interview on Fox News “Tucker Carlson Tonight” (although he has doubled down on the remark since the interview was replayed recently).

Furthermore, Vance wasn’t calling only Kamala Harris names. No, he threw other Democrats into the same category when he stated that the U.S. was being run by Democrats, corporate oligarchs and “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.”

Vance appeared to label certain men, as well as women, on the political left as childless cat ladies, as long as they are childless, and Democrats.

“It’s just a basic fact,” he said. “You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Corte) — the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children…

“They live in one-bedroom apartments in New York City, they’ve played their entire lives to win a status game….

“And I think because of that, they just get so angry … when somebody calls out that ‘Look, if you’re a miserable cat lady, you should not force your misery on the rest of the country,’ they just get really upset about it.”

Vance defended his previous comments on the Fox Megyn Kelly show July 26, 2024, stating that he was not criticizing people who don’t have children, but rather the Democratic Party for being “anti-family and anti-child.”

The rampage has now gone so far that even Taylor Swift has been referred to as a childless cat lady, but this is simply inaccurate. According to the cat lady trope, which is old, even ancient, the cat lady is not a beautiful young woman. Historically, women seen as witches were old crones (not necessarily Democrats), and yes, they had cats.

In the Middle Ages, cats were linked to paganism and witchcraft. Witches were commonly believed to shape-shift into cats. In 1233 Pope Gregory IX issued a papal decree, “Vox in Rama,” condemning a German devil-worship heresy known as Luciferian. The pope’s declaration that cats, especially black cats, were the devil’s servants was to bring considerable tribulation to cats and their owners.

For centuries, the persecution of cats and cat ladies was rife all over Britain and Europe.

In 1324, Alice Kyteler was condemned for witchcraft in Ireland, accused of possessing an incubus that resembled a black cat.

In Belgium during the Middle Ages cats were hurled from the belfry tower of the Cloth Hall into the town square below and then set on fire. This went on until 1817. The festival of Kattenstoet, or parade of cats, is now held every three years, with floats and giant, elaborate puppets. Toy cats are thrown from the belfry, followed by the ritual burning of a witch puppet.

In colonial America, black cats were a feature of the late 17th-century Salem witch trials, and the tradition has carried down to our modern day celebration of Halloween.

The trope of the single woman and her association with cats was popular during the Victorian era, when the queen herself, with a burgeoning flock of nine children, represented family values.

“The old maid would not be typical of her class without the cat,” declared an 1880 editorial in the Dundee Courier.

Surely, it should come as no surprise when Borowitz reports “infuriated by J.D. Vance’s disparagement of childless cat owners, the nation’s cats are planning a mass protest at his next campaign appearance.”

(Martha Allen, of Keene Valley, has been writing for the Lake Placid News since 1996.)