JD Vance went viral for ‘cat lady’ comments. The centuries-old trope has a long tail

JULY 29, 2024 1:42 PM ET
By Rachel Treisman

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Cats were used as a symbol of anti-suffrage propaganda, but reclaimed by some suffragists. A century later, some voters see Vance's "cat lady" comments as a call to mobilize.
Ken Florey Suffrage Collection/Gado/Getty Images



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The long tail of the cat lady trope, explained

Vance is far from the first person to invoke the trope of the crazy cat lady. The insult has literally been leveled against childless women for centuries.

We know that ancient Egyptians appreciated cats as a source of companionship (including in the afterlife) and associated them with deities, most famously in the case of the feline goddess Bastet.

But cats’ reputation soured in the Middle Ages, as they were increasingly linked to paganism and witchcraft.

While many Europeans kept cats as pets, many others came to see them as sinister (perhaps due to their handling of mice, especially at night). Twelfth-century accounts offer descriptions of the devil transforming into a black cat and of heretical religious groups worshiping cats.

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