Donald Trump’s vice-presidential candidate JD Vance has joined forces with American cat owners. He has said that the Democratic Party is run by childless cat ladies and that this is a problem. Hmm. Interesting. Are cat ladies a separate category of people? This is what JD Vance said. An interview done by the TV channel Fox News in 2021 has resurfaced after JD Vance became Trump’s vice presidential candidate. There, JD Vance talks to Tucker Carlson about the Democratic Party that he believes is run 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.” (… a bunch of childless cat ladies who are so unhappy with their own life choices that they want the rest of the country to be unhappy too.) Vance has also said that this group of people should have higher taxes and that their ballots should count less than anyone else’s . He reasons this by the fact that they have not invested anything in the future – read: children. I immediately had to find a cat lady and investigate the case more closely. At the cat lady – How many cats do you have? – What are you asking? How many people are registered in my name or how many people live here? – Erh… Both parts. – 3 and 11. The cats who come to Kari are lucky. Here they receive care and attention while awaiting new owners. Photo: Tone Gjerde / news The cat lady Kari Rolland is a straightforward lady and answers exactly what I ask. We are visiting her garden at Hallangen in Frogn municipality, south of Oslo. Kari stands with a bag of cat treats in her hand as a lure while she calls in her furry friends: – Esme, TomTom, Burma, Totus. On the left in the picture you see TomTom the cat. Totus sits on the rock at the back, while Burma is the blonde cat. Photo: Tone Gjerde / news The photographer is waiting for the four-legged ones to show themselves. Only three allow themselves to be lured into joint photography in the garden. The others seem uninterested in both mother’s call and snoop. Kari Rolland heads the Nesoddkatten foundation. They catch cats without an owner and relocate individuals who need a new place to live for various reasons. Therefore, it is never good to say how many cats live at Kari’s. It varies. If you don’t like cats, you should stay away from Kari Rolland’s garden. An old caravan has become a palace for homeless cats. Many caravans have a nail tent along the side. Also saw Kari’s cat cart. She currently houses a feral cat with cubs in an enclosure, in addition to the seven other cats who come and go as they please. Photo: Tone Gjerde / news But is the word cat lady an official expression? A special group Yes, according to the dictionary. Both the Cambridge dictionary and the Bokmål dictionary claim that. In the latter encyclopedia, the term is listed as follows: Note the example used in the dictionary – she was on the verge of becoming a crazy cat lady. Random? Hardly. The word “crazy” appears surprisingly often in connection with cat and lady. This is, as far as I know, the only meeting between animals and people that places the animal owner in a separate clique with clear personality traits and an unstable psyche. There are no dog ladies, budgie ladies or rabbit ladies. The closest is “horse girl”, but that says very little about the girl’s personality, apart from the fact that she spends a lot of time in the stable. She just likes horses. Catman Ernest Hemingway. Photo: Hans Malmberg / Nordic Museum Are there catmen? The scientist Isaac Newton is said to have invented the cat door when he saw a hole in the wall so that the cats could go in and out without disturbing him in his work. He lived life alone with cats. Ernest Hemingway, the manliest man of all, had many cats. Descendants of these still live in his house in Key West, in the very south of Florida. Author Mark Twain said that a man who loves cats is his friend without further introduction. Frank Zappa and John Lennon were cat lovers. Comedian Ricky Gervais too. But even though there are many examples of catmen, they do not become a separate group. They are just men who like cats. Let me put it this way – it’s hardly the cat ladies themselves who consider themselves weird. So there must be someone outside the “cat lady” group who thinks such women are crazy or crazy. But what does the cat lady herself think about this? Is Kari the cat lady crazy? In Kari’s garden, there is no doubt about her love for felines. Outside her small house stands an old caravan that four-legged friends can live in during the winter. In addition, there are huge cages in the garden and several cat hatches carved into the house wall. Even half of the living room in the small house is divided with netting, in case she needs the space for another fur ball. I decide to go straight to the point and ask: – Are you a crazy cat lady? – At least I live well with the term, says Kari. Now I am 65 years old, and I stand more firmly in my shoes than ever. I know what I do and what I want. I don’t care what others say about my choices. Then she continues in an even sharper tone. – But if I am to take Trump’s vice-presidential candidacy seriously, I would say that his cat lady statement is a cheap and prejudiced point against grown women. This is how people talk who have no other points to make. – Do you feel that cat ladies have something in common apart from having a cat? – Maybe we are a little more creative and healthy naive than others? Anyway, I’m glad I’m a little naive. It makes the world a more fun place, says Kari. What does science say about cat ladies? Much research has been done about cat owners and dog owners. The difference seems to fascinate many people. The largest and most reliable project is “the Gosling-Potter Internet Personality Project.” Here, 4,565 self-proclaimed dog people and cat people answered the well-known Big Five personality test. Cat owners were more creative, non-traditional and sensitive, while dog owners were the most outgoing, social and conscientious. Just as if we couldn’t have guessed this in advance. The question is whether people choose a pet that mirrors the owner’s characteristics from before, or whether the owner gradually becomes more like their pet. The survey does not say anything about that. Can you be “captured” by a cat? Cats can be carriers of the parasite toxoplasmosis gondii. The parasite multiplies in the cat’s intestines and is transmitted to other species through contact with cat faeces. Findings suggest that mice that have been infected by the toxoplasmosis parasite are less afraid of cats, ergo easier prey. Now some claim that the same process occurs when a person is infected by toxoplasmosis. This has not yet been proven. 10-20 percent of the population in Norway is infected by the parasite, which rarely causes noticeable symptoms in otherwise healthy individuals. Once you get the parasite, it will follow you for life. The only group in the population that should avoid being infected by toxoplasmosis for the first time are pregnant women. Nevertheless – we have not reached the bottom of the alliance between woman and cat. What makes this particular relationship so special, especially from the outside? How did cat lady become a term? It is difficult to determine exactly when this happened. The mix of cat and woman has been a separate category for centuries. Not to mention millennia. A human and a cat have been found in a grave in Cyprus. The tomb is around 9,500 years old. The most astonishing thing about this discovery is that cats are not found naturally in Cyprus. The cat, or its great-grandmother, must have been taken to the island. Ergo, cats have been a beloved animal for us humans for a long time. The ancient Egyptians believed that the cat was a sacred animal, and there were severe penalties for killing one. The cat god was called Bastet, and she was a mixture of a woman and a cat. The goddess Bastet in two editions. Photo: Photo on the left: Rama / Louvre Museum / Wikimedia commons & right: Trustees of the British Museum In Norse mythology, the goddess Frøya traveled with a cart pulled by two cats. The stately carriage they found with the ladies buried in the Oseberg ship therefore had carved cats as decoration. The Oseberg Viking Heritage Foundation in Tønsberg has made an exact copy of the Oseberg wagon. It is currently on loan to the Midgard Viking Center in Borre and can be seen inside the Gildehallen. Photo: Kulturhistorisk Museum/UiO It may seem as if the alliance between cat and human, or specifically, cat and woman, was quite unproblematic and pleasant in most places on the globe, until the Catholic Church realized that the cat was a scary creature. The church could not stop the women from having cats. Here is a painting of a cat lady painted by the Italian painter Francesco Bacchiacca (1494-1557). Photo: wikicommons It began under Pope Gregory (1227-1241) and his decree “Vox in Rama”. There is a warning that Satan could take up residence in black cats. Then began the demonization of women as witches. The two – the woman and the cat – could be in league with the devil. Pope Gregor also found out that devil worshipers lick cats’ ass. Namely. Over the following centuries, women and cats were burned. In the Belgian city of Ypres, four-legged animals were thrown from a high tower as a kind of annual celebration. The last cat in Ypres met the hard ground in 1817. Some historians believe that the church’s cat phobia arose out of a need to crack down on pre-Christian notions that cats were valuable creatures. Others argue that this was a way to stifle the feminine, and perhaps slightly kinky, power these women represent. Witches and cats are often depicted together. Here is a fairly common illustration of the phenomenon from 1908. One can assume that the witch is on her way to Bloksberg with her four-legged friend. Illustration: Raphael Tuck and Sons Cat ladies and cats are difficult to keep under control, both in the Middle Ages and now. We were to experience that out at Kari Rolland’s. Cats, women and chaos The cats didn’t bother to come when she called them to take pictures. Not so strange. Several of those who spend time with Kari are wild cats upon arrival. Then she gradually tames them. It can take several years to tame an old wild cat, she says. Photo: Tone Gjerde / news – But when they first show you trust and trust you… Kari ends in the middle of a sentence. She is bright-eyed and moved by the thought of becoming friends and close to an independent animal that only does what it wants. I am preparing my political questions. – Are you cat ladies a danger to democracy? – We are probably a danger to JD Vance because we don’t vote for him, she says ironically. Kari Rolland does not know that she is statistically right about this. The Washington Post has investigated the matter and points out that the states with the most dogs vote Republican, while the blue states, which the Democrats hold, have the most cats. – If you became prime minister – how would we notice that we had got a cat lady in the chief’s chair? – That was a funny question, says Kari. Unfortunately, there is no funny answer, because something is happening in the garden. One of the cats seems to be limping on its hind leg. There are no visible injuries, but the cat whines when Kari touches its paw. Thus, everything changes in an instant. Kari flies into the house and comes out again on top one minute later. By then she has already called the neighbour, fixed a car, spoken to the vet at Kolbotn, and has found a transport cage for the four-legged one. – We’ll take the rest on the phone, she shouts as she speeds off with the kitty strapped to the passenger seat. And suddenly both cat and lady were gone. Photo: Tone Gjerde / news Again the photographer and I stand a little amazed with a bunch of cats hiding in the bushes. Because regardless of who wins the election in the US, that person will have control over keeping both cats and their female owners in order. Such creatures are unpredictable and do as they please. This is presumably what frustrates vice presidential candidate JD Vance. Source list: Read about the parasite toxoplasmosis in an article from news. You can find more about the difference between dog owners and cat owners from the Gosling–Potter Internet Personality Project here. Article about the archaeological find of a 9500-year-old grave with a cat can be found here. Pope Gregory IX and the decree Vox in Rama can be found by clicking here. And finally, you can get to know the Egyptian goddess Bastet.
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Are cat ladies a danger to democracy? – Culture
