Understanding the cat lore of the 2024 presidential election
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The cat lady. Sometimes she’s crazy, other times she’s childless but one thing is clear — she is never portrayed as someone you want to be.
In the 2024 presidential election, the archetype has played a large role on both sides of the aisle.
A 2021 interview with JD Vance on Fox News, as he was running for U.S. Senate in Ohio, resurfaced a few months ago. He said that the country was being 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.”
At the time he made it, the comment went fairly unchecked. Three years later when a cut from the interview entered mainstream media again, things were different. Vance was the Republican vice presidential nominee and Harris, who he previously lumped in as a “childless cat lady,” was headed for the Democratic presidential nomination.
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In 2014, Harris married the second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, and became the stepmother to Emhoff’s two kids from his first marriage, Cole and Ella.
In August, Vance said the comment was “sarcastic” and “a lot of Democrats have willfully misinterpreted it” in an interview with Meet the Press.
But the damage was already done. For voters it became a rallying cry. Many celebrities have also used the insult as power including Taylor Swift, Gloria Steinem and Stevie Nicks.
A cat lover in the governor’s office
Pets have played a role in previous presidential elections, but the coverage has usually gone to the dogs, like a story about Mitt Romney’s family dog in the 2012 campaign or Richard Nixon’s “Checkers” speech about the family pet in 1952 in which the vice presidential nominee salvaged his run in the new age of television.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, is a dual pet owner. While his dog Scout has been in the news most recently when Republicans questioned his identity, the Walz family adopted their first cat Afton in 2019 from the Blue Earth Nicollet County Humane Society in Mankato.
On Aug. 26, 2023, Afton went missing from the Walz home in St. Paul. Afton was known for venturing outside, so much so he had to get an Apple AirTag.
But when he went missing, Afton somehow shed his AirTag. There have been no updates of his whereabouts since.
A few months later, the Walz family welcomed Honey, who eerily looks similar to Afton. The orange tabby has a bit more white coloring than the previous first feline.
Walz, a self-proclaimed cat person, responded to Vance’s comments at a rally in Michigan.
“It’s not as if I didn’t warn these guys a few months ago: You mess with cat people, you will find out. You will find out,” Walz said. “They did. Beautiful strategy there, picking on cat people.”
From slight to signage
Minnesotans took note. Beyond the myriad of Harris-Walz signs decorating lawns of the Twin Cities, a new sign design came out of Minneapolis, the city that also hosts the much-anticipated Wedge cat tour, “Cats for Kamala.”
Sisters Leslie and Nina Hale placed an order for 50 yard signs shortly after Walz’s comments in Michigan. They started with just friends and family and soon, everyone in their neighborhood was begging for one. They have sold about 400 signs.
Nina and Leslie are both cat owners and said in the beginning they thought the reclamation of the term would die down. They have a third sister, Jocey, who is allergic to cats.
They have had dog lovers come and buy signs, and they even say a self-proclaimed Republican who said while he still plans to vote for Trump, he just loves the sign.
The Hales say they agree with Walz: Don’t mess with cat people.
“It is so insulting to assume that people who do not have children do not have a stake in our future, of course that is not the case,” Nina said. “And then to frame it around cats, it just adds more to the insult.”
The “Cats for Kamala” signs have been distributed on the honor system with recipients paying via Venmo. While they have enjoyed their new venture, it has been busy.
Nina and Leslie do not plan on ordering more “Cats for Kamala” signs — they feel like they got their point across. They have sent the PDF of the sign design to those interested, and it can also be purchased off of Etsy.