SHIFTHEADS: Why Cats Got a Bad Reputation (And Kept It)

Shane Hewitt and The Nightshift · Jul 1, 2026 · 9m

Thirty percent of people don't like cats. Only five percent feel that way about dogs. Rod Phillips has spent years figuring out why, and the answer goes back further than most people expect.

Phillips, a historian at Carleton University and author of Cats: A History, makes the case that cats haven't changed in thousands of years. What changed is what people decided they meant. The Middle Ages turned them into devil's accomplices. Walt Disney named his most famous cat Lucifer and went on record saying he didn't like cats because you can't tell them what to do. The bias didn't start there, but…