Word of the week | Cat

What is the word that caught our attention in the news this week? What does it reveal? Our columnist looks into the question.

Who could have predicted that cats would find themselves involved in the American presidential campaign?

In the space of 24 hours, domestic felines have intruded into our conversations, and not always for the right reasons.

In the debate between US Vice President Kamala Harris and former US President Donald Trump, the cat found itself at the heart of a false (and racist) statement.

Mr. Trump actually claimed, without a hint of irony, that Haitian immigrants in the small town of Springfield, Ohio, were killing and eating domestic cats and dogs…

That the American media had to send journalists into the field to verify that no cat or dog roasts had taken place in Springfield illustrates how surreal political discussion in the United States can sometimes be.

Mr. Trump’s statement also shows how misinformation — the false story about immigrants killing and eating pets that circulated on social media — can find its way into a nationally televised debate. Distressing.

The Trump-cat association is not new.

It dates back to 2005, when the former president confided to the host Billy Bush, of the show Access Hollywoodthat he used to “grab women by the pussy” (translation: “grab them by the pussy”). This is the Washington Post who, during the 2016 election campaign, made public the recording of this conversation, which was at the very least vulgar and oh so revealing.

These degrading and sexist remarks will stick to the Republican candidate, but will not prevent his election.

The cats, however, had not said their last word.

The day after his inauguration, on January 21, 2017, thousands of women marched in the capital, proudly wearing a pink hat with two small pointed ears – the now famous Pussyhats – to protest against the arrival of this man with sexual predatory behavior in the White House.

Two years later, during an official visit to London, the president crossed swords with another cat, the famous Larry, tenant of 10 Downing Street, the home of the British Prime Minister. Taking refuge under the president’s official limousine, Larry stubbornly refused to move and Donald Trump had to wait patiently for the famous cat to deign to come out of hiding…

If cats are back in force in the 2024 presidential campaign, it’s because of JD Vance this time. In 2021, Donald Trump’s current running mate declared in an interview with Tucker Carlson that women in the Democratic Party were “cat women without children”, a cliché as tenacious in the collective imagination as that of the witch woman, the shrew woman or the overly emotional woman… Mr. Vance added that “these women want the country to be as miserable as they are”.

Unsurprisingly, Mr. Vance’s comments resurfaced on social media in July. That was enough to send childless cat ladies storming social media. The movement reached its peak Tuesday night, minutes after the debate, when singer Taylor Swift announced to her more than 283 million Instagram followers that she was endorsing Kamala Harris. She signed her statement: “childless cat lady.”

Has the cat, which has always symbolized independence and autonomy, become a figure of the left? Will cat owners have an impact on the outcome of the American elections?

Three social psychology researchers – Chantelle Ivanski, Ronda F. Lo and Raymond A. Mar – took a serious look at the question, analyzing the results of the 2016 vote.

They looked at voting results in states with the highest and lowest proportions of dog and cat owners.

While they acknowledge that there is still a lot of data missing to draw definitive conclusions, they nevertheless observed that in 7 out of 10 states in which candidate Trump had obtained the most votes (Tennessee, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Nebraska, Idaho and Mississippi), there were the greatest number of dog owners. The dog, associated with conservatism, would be a better predictor of vote, cat owners would be more unpredictable. You can read their report in Pets and Politics: Do Liberals and Conservatives Differ in Their Preferences for Cats Versus Dogs?, published in 2021 by the University of California Press.

It’s hard to tell whether the cat is left-wing or right-wing, then. But he certainly seems to be a troublemaker.

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