Latest / Ridiculous History / It's a Cat's World, Part 1: The Sacred and the Suspicious

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It's a Cat's World, Part 1: The Sacred and the Suspicious · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
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Speaker 1: to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you so
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Speaker 1: much for tuning in. Today's episode is especially dedicated to
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Speaker 1: I Luri files a word I just learned that means
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Speaker 1: lover of cats. Ben, I thought you were about to
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Speaker 1: say a word I just made up, but it sounds
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Speaker 1: too fancy and science e for that to be the case.
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Speaker 1: I don't know this word either, Ben, Yeah, yeah, it's
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Speaker 1: uh a I l u r O file. Also a
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Speaker 1: cat fancier we've got. We've got a bunch of fans
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Speaker 1: of cats, dogs, pats, animals in general in the crowd
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Speaker 1: today and notes here uh that my pal Nolan I
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Speaker 1: are ourselves cat owners. So this will necessarily be a
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Speaker 1: two part episode. You know, there's always been this kind
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Speaker 1: of I would say, a false divide between dog lovers
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Speaker 1: and cat lovers. There are some people who feel like
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Speaker 1: those things are mutually exclusive, but nol I um. I
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Speaker 1: see it in some people, but usually I disagree. I think.
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Speaker 1: I think, especially the rise of the cat memes and
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Speaker 1: videos online, have have done a lot for the reputations
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Speaker 1: of our feline friends. What would you say I would
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Speaker 1: agree with that, and Ben, I was reminded just the
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Speaker 1: other day of a little brief period in cat internet
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Speaker 1: meme video culture where people were spooking their cats with cucumbers.
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Speaker 1: We can, guys remember this. That seemed to be a
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Speaker 1: very universal reaction. Cats would not not only gets spooked,
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Speaker 1: they would just jump straight up in the air. I'm
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Speaker 1: assuming that they thought it was a snake or something
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Speaker 1: like that. But uh yeah, I don't know why that
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Speaker 1: popped out from my my mental index the other day,
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Speaker 1: but I went and looked at like a nice super
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Speaker 1: cut of all of them, and then sure enough, every
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Speaker 1: single cat jumps straight up in the air. But it's true, Ben, cats,
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Speaker 1: the internet has really made cats kind of a universal thing,
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Speaker 1: whether it's like your grumpy cat, you're a little bub
2:22
Speaker 1: remember a little Bub when we were in by Discovery
2:24
Speaker 1: Channel because he was technically our our coworker. Yes. And
2:29
Speaker 1: while you're on the Internet, by the way, you can
2:31
Speaker 1: also go to t Public and check out our ridiculous
2:34
Speaker 1: history swag featuring a T shirt with none other than
2:39
Speaker 1: super producer Casey Pegram Casey I, I don't want people
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Speaker 1: to equate you with little Bub. We we make high
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Speaker 1: quality memes here at ridiculous history. Only the best memes here,
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Speaker 1: only the best. Yeah. For the longest time I thought
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Speaker 1: it was little bubbs, but is not plural. Who's just
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Speaker 1: a single bub um? But you know, the thing about
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Speaker 1: cats too is the expression in cats comes to mind
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Speaker 1: as possibly a good argument for why maybe cat shows
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Speaker 1: aren't as much of a thing as dog shows. Dogs
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Speaker 1: can be trained, they prance around on command. They're much
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Speaker 1: more beholden to their masters. Cats are kind of notoriously
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Speaker 1: fickle and kind of do whatever they want. And I'm
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Speaker 1: assuming there still are cat shows, but you don't really
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Speaker 1: hear about them in the same way as you would, like, say,
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Speaker 1: the Westminster dog show. But it turns out that there is.
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Speaker 1: We can pinpoint the world's very first cat show. Uh.
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Speaker 1: And it wasn't held in Westminster, mind you, but it
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Speaker 1: was held at the St Giles Fair in Winchester, also
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Speaker 1: in England. In it's true, uh, we we don't know
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Speaker 1: much about this first cat show other than that date.
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Speaker 1: In fact, some historians challenge whether it occurred at all,
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Speaker 1: but we know that and the following years other cat
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Speaker 1: owners may have hosted a similar somehow lesser known of
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Speaker 1: the the event that finally put cat shows on the
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Speaker 1: map was a national competition at London's Crystal Palace in
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Speaker 1: eighteen seventy one, and a huge reason for feline popularity
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Speaker 1: in the UK after that time was a man named
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Speaker 1: Harrison Weir. He was an artist. He was also the
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Speaker 1: father of cat fancy. That is his that is his name,
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Speaker 1: That's how he's known. He is responsible for writing the
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Speaker 1: first pedigree cat book, which with the lovely title Our
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Speaker 1: Cats and All About Them. He also founded the UK
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Speaker 1: National Cat Club. You know the thing with breeding animals
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Speaker 1: and dog shows and oh there's also a contest for
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Speaker 1: like the most beautiful goat in some country. I can't
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Speaker 1: remember which one. Uh. The thing about those all those
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Speaker 1: shows is they set standards for specific cat breeds. So
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Speaker 1: like a Persian cat, then it's this quantifiable list of
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Speaker 1: things that make them the most persian of cats? Or
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Speaker 1: what's the most the most jellical of cats? Right? Am?
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Speaker 1: I getting that right? Jelical the jelical cats the most
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Speaker 1: absurd concept in all of Broadway musical history. What does
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Speaker 1: it even mean? What? What is a jelical cat? Nobody knows?
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Speaker 1: I watched the first, not the entirety, but maybe the
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Speaker 1: first segment of the live action Cats. Have you guys
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Speaker 1: seen it? Yeah, it's nightmare fuel. My friend, it is
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Speaker 1: uh not good? A and and dare I say actively uncomfortable?
5:37
Speaker 1: You know, like I'm a I'm a proponent of personal
5:41
Speaker 1: liberty in many situations. So even if drugs aren't for me,
5:46
Speaker 1: I think it's fine for people to experiment. I just
5:49
Speaker 1: don't think it should affect your work. Yeah, that's true.
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Speaker 1: What's the guy's name, Toby something? Tom Hooper is his name?
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Speaker 1: Odd choice with that one. He really went down the
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Speaker 1: Broadway rabbit hole. The King's speech was a fine little film,
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Speaker 1: and then like his lame is is quite good actually,
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Speaker 1: but this was just he really jumped the cat on
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Speaker 1: this one. And can you imagine if they had left
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Speaker 1: the butt holes in? I want to see that cut.
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Speaker 1: That's apparently a cut where the weird anthromorphized over sexualized
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Speaker 1: cat people have cat butt holes. I heard that. I
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Speaker 1: heard that from one of my friends who who got
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Speaker 1: a little bit steamed with me because he saw cats
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Speaker 1: in the theater. Remember this came out pre pandemic, and
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Speaker 1: I was roasting him about it, and it's like, you
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Speaker 1: secretly love this film and he said, no, here are
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Speaker 1: some facts about it. And he's the one who hitped
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Speaker 1: me into the uh the infamous butt hole at it,
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Speaker 1: which is sort of like the Snyder at It of cats. Exactly.
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Speaker 1: It's very it's it's it's gonna come out eventually. I
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Speaker 1: saw in the theater Sto by the way, with my
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Speaker 1: kid and both of the Throughout the whole thing, we
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Speaker 1: were just looking at each other like uncomfortably, just like
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Speaker 1: what even as this? But you know, I can't. I
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Speaker 1: won't walk out of a movie no matter how unbearable
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Speaker 1: bad it is. But here's the thing, Cats, the musical
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Speaker 1: uh has always kind of had a bit of a
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Speaker 1: bad rap. Uh. It's very very very popular, but very
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Speaker 1: perplexing a lot of people that don't get it. It's
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Speaker 1: a little odd, it's not you know, it's it seems
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Speaker 1: like the kind of Broadway show that was very much
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Speaker 1: the product of the time and cocaine. Um, I'm gonna argue,
7:20
Speaker 1: but you know it made a lot of money as
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Speaker 1: a little longest running Broadway shows in history. Cats as
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Speaker 1: a species also got a bit of a bad rap
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Speaker 1: throughout history, didn't there, That's right? And you know, staying
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Speaker 1: on cats, the adaptation for just one moment. My primary
7:34
Speaker 1: question watching this, I want to open this to the
7:37
Speaker 1: rest of our fellow ridiculous historians, is uh, what would T.
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Speaker 1: S Elliott think? Would he dig it? Would he be
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Speaker 1: like four point five stars? Where where the buttholes? I
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Speaker 1: don't know. Question lost to history. But you are you
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Speaker 1: are right about cats. No, they've been a divisive creature
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Speaker 1: in human culture. Uh. Part of their behavior can be
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Speaker 1: explained by the act that cats appear to have domesticated themselves,
8:04
Speaker 1: rather than having being bred into domestication the way wolves
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Speaker 1: eventually were bred into dogs. Yea further proof that they
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Speaker 1: do not need us, right right, Well, it's just human beings,
8:15
Speaker 1: being a relatively filthy species generated a lot of trash,
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Speaker 1: which generates a lot of vermin, which works out for
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Speaker 1: cats anyway. We know that cats have gone through ups
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Speaker 1: and downs in their career. They have been at times
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Speaker 1: lauded as sacred beings, and they have been also, you know,
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Speaker 1: the subject of much mistrust. In ancient Egypt, people loved cats.
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Speaker 1: This is proven conclusively in the archaeological record. In fact,
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Speaker 1: a fund thing I learned recently the word for cats
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Speaker 1: in ancient Egyptian was now or like now m au.
8:56
Speaker 1: Really that's where the automotopeia of a cat sound came from. Huh,
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Speaker 1: there's some meme out there, you guys got to see it.
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Speaker 1: Where where you learned the ancient Egyptian word for cat
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Speaker 1: was now? And it's like you pickture, an ancient Egyptian
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Speaker 1: saying what the heck are you? A cat goes and
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Speaker 1: they go all right, yeah, well you see they even
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Speaker 1: named themselves totally don't need us. We are absolutely an afterthought.
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Speaker 1: But the the Egyptians did need cats, that's the thing,
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Speaker 1: much more than the cats needed them, because they were
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Speaker 1: basically worshiped, right though. There are many of their goddesses
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Speaker 1: and and and the pantheon of like Egyptian kind of
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Speaker 1: uh deities had anthropomorphic animal type features. And bass Debt
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Speaker 1: was an ancient Egyptian goddess of love who had the
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Speaker 1: head of a cat. So therefore, the killing of a
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Speaker 1: cat in Egypt was a big no no uh, it
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Speaker 1: would actually be punishable by death. I'm pretty sure a
9:55
Speaker 1: lot of things in ancient Egypt were probably punishable by death,
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Speaker 1: but killing a cat was definitely one of them. Absolutely,
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Speaker 1: And this, uh, this care for cats was something that
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Speaker 1: ancient Romans would have recognized. Their love of felines was
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Speaker 1: a little bit more secular because cats were seen as
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Speaker 1: a symbol of liberty, and then even more practical the
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Speaker 1: further east yougo. In the Far East, cats were considered
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Speaker 1: valuable to society because they hunted rodents that could otherwise
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Speaker 1: damage manuscripts and documents. Uh. And then for some reason,
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Speaker 1: cats got a really bad image in Europe during the
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Speaker 1: Middle Ages. You know what we're talking about black cats,
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Speaker 1: which is black mass Yeah, the old the old image
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Speaker 1: of the cats is like which is trusty familiar. Uh.
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Speaker 1: The idea that they were somehow a liaison, you know,
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Speaker 1: between the the practitioner of black magic and the devil himself. Um.
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Speaker 1: So this was a time, this is basically a cat
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Speaker 1: apocalypse where they were just killed left and right. Um,
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Speaker 1: in a completely misplaced effort to you know, vanquish evil. Right.
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Speaker 1: And when I say misplaced, I mean not only ideologically
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Speaker 1: but also practically, because it caused the rodent infestation to
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Speaker 1: absolutely swell and lead to you got it, the black flag.
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Speaker 1: This dislike of cats continues in Europe for some time.
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Speaker 1: You can read no small amount of dissertations arguing various
11:41
Speaker 1: various reasons why cats got such a bad rep in
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Speaker 1: this part of the world. Over at the Boston Globe,
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Speaker 1: in the article The Crazy History of the Cat Lady,
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Speaker 1: they point out that some scholars argue cats have been
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Speaker 1: part of households as pest control since humans settled into
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Speaker 1: the agricultural era. That's true, but they remained aloof and
12:04
Speaker 1: because they were not domesticated or assimilated into the social
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Speaker 1: hierarchy the same way dogs were, this may have upset
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Speaker 1: the Christian hierarchical ordering of life on Earth at the time,
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Speaker 1: which was like man at top and then other things.
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Speaker 1: Uh So, cats who were kind of in this liminal
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Speaker 1: space between the wild and the domestic, we're always going
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Speaker 1: to be a little bit suss. Also, we should mention,
12:30
Speaker 1: speaking of a more brutal time, Noel, when you said
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Speaker 1: a lot of things may have gotten you the death penalty.
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Speaker 1: In Egypt, a lot of animals were frequently tortured or
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Speaker 1: killed for sport. So people who were overly into cats
12:45
Speaker 1: we're also seen as kind of suss, Like, hey, we
12:48
Speaker 1: we torture these things for fun. You're you're getting real
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Speaker 1: weird agnes or tobias or whatever, which is strange because cats,
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Speaker 1: like you said, throughout history have always served a really
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Speaker 1: functional role. Uh. Even in the Middle Ages they killed vermin, mice,
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Speaker 1: rats and the like, things that would have potentially contaminated
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Speaker 1: people's food supply or water or just you know, they're
13:13
Speaker 1: kind of gross and he's definitely don't want them crawling
13:15
Speaker 1: all over your house so bad. Rap aside. Uh, cats
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Speaker 1: absolutely have always kind of like played an important role
13:23
Speaker 1: because I mean, dogs, I guess we'll do that kind
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Speaker 1: of or you can train them to to do it,
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Speaker 1: but it's not something they just kind of have a
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Speaker 1: natural inclination doing. Cats will do it whether you whether
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Speaker 1: you want them to or not. I used to have
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Speaker 1: it indoor outdoor cat that would just constantly leave weird
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Speaker 1: speaking of cats being laisons of the devil, would leave
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Speaker 1: weird vivisected animal parts at my front stoop, like literally
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Speaker 1: almost like a staged serial killer crime scene from like
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Speaker 1: seven or something. It was quite quite horrific and terrifying.
13:55
Speaker 1: It's only indoor cats for me from now on. There's
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Speaker 1: a really great quote from William cat Exton about this
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Speaker 1: relationship that cats have with little creatures like that, and
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Speaker 1: it goes the devil playeth oft with the sanar, like
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Speaker 1: as the cat doth with the mouse. So there you go. Hmmm,
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Speaker 1: the idea of being that cats catching mice are employing
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Speaker 1: tactics similar to how the devil catches human souls. It's
14:26
Speaker 1: a bit of a leap um. You know later will
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Speaker 1: find as a species that this behavior, which is very
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Speaker 1: common in cats, this behavior of of giving mostly dead
14:38
Speaker 1: or dead animals to their human pals, is somewhere between
14:43
Speaker 1: trying to teach you to hunt, the implication being that
14:47
Speaker 1: you suck at hunting, or trying to feed you. So
14:50
Speaker 1: their attentions are good, but they're wildly misread, and I
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Speaker 1: can I can understand that like nobody's why are you
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Speaker 1: bringing me this? Um? By the twelfth century or so,
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Speaker 1: people really normalize this association with felines and the devil.
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Speaker 1: Around eleven eight, Walter Mapp published something wherein he examines
15:13
Speaker 1: his ideas of Satanic rituals, and he says it goes
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Speaker 1: down like this. They gave it a black catch before
15:22
Speaker 1: his devotees. Your worship was put out delight and draw
15:25
Speaker 1: near to the place where they saw their basta. They
15:28
Speaker 1: feared after him, and when they have found him. They
15:32
Speaker 1: kissed him under the tail. So sorry, they're like cat
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Speaker 1: butt kissing. That's what Walter Mapp thought happened during during
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Speaker 1: these Satanic rituals. And then you would think, Okay, maybe
15:48
Speaker 1: this is just an artifact of the times, right, maybe
15:51
Speaker 1: this is just a fad that goes away. But it
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Speaker 1: didn't change post Middle Ages, didn't all, No, it didn't
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Speaker 1: at all. In fact, it got worse. Cats be came
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Speaker 1: even more linked with black magic and UH and witchery
16:04
Speaker 1: and all of that. Agnes Waterhouse, who was the first
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Speaker 1: woman in England who was executed for witchcraft um in
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Speaker 1: fifteen sixty six, confessed to having a cat and keeping
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Speaker 1: it as a familiar, which I love that term, by
16:17
Speaker 1: the way, familiar being just an animal kind of uh,
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Speaker 1: that you keep that a witch keeps around or or
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Speaker 1: a wizard keeps around. Uh. And you know, usually you
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Speaker 1: can use them to I almost act as like a
16:30
Speaker 1: surrogate kind of like they they they'll do your bidding,
16:33
Speaker 1: you know, in theory or whatever, or they'll like do
16:35
Speaker 1: things for you, or they'll you know, potentially do things
16:38
Speaker 1: you know to others on your behalf. Uh. It's interesting
16:41
Speaker 1: and i'd love to to hear a little bit more
16:42
Speaker 1: about the history of that term familiar. But reporting on
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Speaker 1: this at the time, UH said that Waterhouse called the
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Speaker 1: cat satan and actually said it to kill her husband
16:54
Speaker 1: in return for feeding it her own blood. Yikes, with
17:00
Speaker 1: knowing the details of their marriage, maybe it's unfair for
17:04
Speaker 1: us to UH to assume that was not a deal
17:07
Speaker 1: on the up and up. You know, maybe it made sense,
17:10
Speaker 1: Maybe it made sense we had all the factors together,
17:13
Speaker 1: like maybe he had it coming. Maybe maybe Uh. So
17:17
Speaker 1: here we are, cats have already had some skyrocketing social
17:22
Speaker 1: highs and some physically dangerous social lows. If you fast
17:27
Speaker 1: forward to the eighteen sixties, the average cat is considered
17:31
Speaker 1: like lower working class now because they catch rats and
17:35
Speaker 1: you shouldn't have rats in a nice house. So there's
17:38
Speaker 1: street animals. They're considered useful because they hunt vermin, but
17:44
Speaker 1: they're not really considered like cute, cudly companion animals. Even
17:50
Speaker 1: Charles Darwin complains about them in On the Origin of
17:53
Speaker 1: the Species, and Windsor Magazine says that they're just a
17:57
Speaker 1: necessary household appendage. So if you think about it back
18:02
Speaker 1: at that time, snuggling with a cat would be like
18:06
Speaker 1: having a really deep emotional relationship with your blender. It did,
18:11
Speaker 1: it didn't make sense to people. They might not burn
18:14
Speaker 1: you at the steak anymore, but they would be like, wow,
18:16
Speaker 1: blender lady is weird. Absolutely um. And even moreover, the
18:21
Speaker 1: fact that they were seen as unclean because of their
18:25
Speaker 1: relationship with vermin and the fact that they always were
18:27
Speaker 1: killing them, one would assume that they, you know, are
18:30
Speaker 1: covered in that same kind of filth um, which, to
18:35
Speaker 1: be fair, if you have an outdoor cat, you're probably
18:37
Speaker 1: snuggling with the cat that has you know, vivisected creatures
18:41
Speaker 1: out in the wild. So worked to the wise there.
18:43
Speaker 1: But anyway, it's interesting. As time goes on, cats become polarizing,
18:49
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, like I mean, they kind of always already
18:52
Speaker 1: have been a little bit, but this is really like
18:55
Speaker 1: takes to the next level. There's an absolute split on
18:58
Speaker 1: people's opinions about hats in the nineteenth century. Yes, so
19:02
Speaker 1: at the beginning of what we call the Victorian era today,
19:07
Speaker 1: cats and animals in general were becoming more and more popular.
19:12
Speaker 1: If you went to a classy Victorian home, you would
19:15
Speaker 1: see plants, you would see animals, and if people were
19:18
Speaker 1: really bawling out you would see some fish. Uh. This
19:21
Speaker 1: is also, by the way, the age where the garden
19:26
Speaker 1: hermit fad took off. You guys remember that from our
19:28
Speaker 1: earlier episode where you just paid somebody to be weird
19:31
Speaker 1: at your backyard just to hang out in your garden.
19:34
Speaker 1: Very strange. That was on our Weird Flex episode. I
19:37
Speaker 1: believe you, Yes, yes, I believe that's correct. That by
19:40
Speaker 1: the way, quick sidebar, there's a there's this guy in
19:44
Speaker 1: Japan who figured out this amazing thing. Uh. He was
19:49
Speaker 1: my hero of the week a few weeks ago. There's
19:52
Speaker 1: a guy he's working right now. I know this because
19:54
Speaker 1: we're Twitter friends. He's working right now where you can
19:59
Speaker 1: rent him to do nothing. He will hang out with you.
20:03
Speaker 1: He will respond too simple, non philosophical questions, and he
20:08
Speaker 1: will just sort of go do stuff that you. He
20:11
Speaker 1: will go stand around while you do stuff. Uh, what
20:15
Speaker 1: is what's what's that guy's name? Looks like it's show
20:18
Speaker 1: Gi Morimoto. That's right, Casey on the case. So he's
20:22
Speaker 1: like a professional like guy on the couch, he's a
20:25
Speaker 1: professional mooch essentially. Yeah, he's a professional just hang out
20:31
Speaker 1: with you, companion person. I guess he's kind of a
20:34
Speaker 1: professional cat any anyhow, shout out, shout out to you, sir. Uh,
20:40
Speaker 1: there's a great Vice article about him, if you'd like
20:42
Speaker 1: to learn more. Uh. So, there's this interesting thing. So
20:46
Speaker 1: some scholars, like author Kathleen Keat, who wrote The Beast
20:50
Speaker 1: in the Boudoir pet Keeping a nineteenth century Paris, argue
20:54
Speaker 1: that there's a compensation thing going on here in the
20:58
Speaker 1: upper class. They're saying, at the people who are really classy,
21:02
Speaker 1: the pet owners were in fact compensating for their inability
21:06
Speaker 1: to control the lower working classes of humans. So they
21:10
Speaker 1: would put that desire for domination into keeping pets and plants.
21:16
Speaker 1: That is brilliant, What a power move. Yeah, it's like, okay,
21:20
Speaker 1: you can't you know, you can't exercise any autonomy over
21:25
Speaker 1: your own life. So here have have this like small
21:28
Speaker 1: creature to take care of and and exert dominance over. Uh.
21:32
Speaker 1: That's fantastic. Um I can relate. Honestly, I think that
21:37
Speaker 1: sentiment still holds true a little bit today. UM. So
21:41
Speaker 1: here's the thing as as this kind of Oh I
21:44
Speaker 1: don't know, I guess you could call it renaissance of
21:47
Speaker 1: of of cats, pets in general, but cats in particular. Uh,
21:51
Speaker 1: came around. There was a kind of a new movement
21:54
Speaker 1: established um to give them, to treat them more like
21:59
Speaker 1: members of the family instead of just like furniture or
22:02
Speaker 1: you know, functional kind of doers like rap exactly, rap
22:07
Speaker 1: room us. Uh. This this idea of kind of imbuing
22:10
Speaker 1: them with feelings and emotions and that they were like
22:14
Speaker 1: one of us. This became a thing. In eighteen fifty
22:17
Speaker 1: the Graham in law in France UH officially prohibited the
22:22
Speaker 1: abuse of animals there, which is a big deal. It
22:25
Speaker 1: seems like Doug like, that's something that we take for granted,
22:28
Speaker 1: the idea of animal cruelty. But to your point Ban earlier,
22:31
Speaker 1: in the Middle Ages and beyond, animals cats in particular
22:34
Speaker 1: were very universally tortured. Yeah. Absolutely, it was an accepted
22:40
Speaker 1: fact of life. So we're going to dive into this,
22:49
Speaker 1: where do we get this weird social thing about uh
22:53
Speaker 1: cat ladies quote unquote. The bond between women and cats
22:57
Speaker 1: seems to be called even more pronounced during the nineteenth century,
23:01
Speaker 1: at least in terms of uh social acknowledgement of it.
23:07
Speaker 1: So a lot of people had said that they had
23:11
Speaker 1: said that there was something specifically between female members of
23:17
Speaker 1: the human species as they identified at the time and
23:21
Speaker 1: cats in a History of French Passions, Anxiety and Hypocrisy,
23:26
Speaker 1: Volume five. By the way, France, Sorry, CAZy, this is crazy.
23:32
Speaker 1: There are five volumes of this. Have you ever heard
23:34
Speaker 1: of this book? I have not. I'm in I'm intrigued,
23:37
Speaker 1: but I have to say I'm probably not likely to
23:39
Speaker 1: read it. Okay, come, I'll give you. I don't know
23:43
Speaker 1: if I'm gonna read volume one and four. It may
23:45
Speaker 1: prejudice us against the country. But it's okay. We can
23:48
Speaker 1: just exert. We can just we can just exert. So uh.
23:51
Speaker 1: Theodore Zelden, the author of this book, notes that many
23:54
Speaker 1: contemporaneous observers said women are lavishing affects in on all
24:01
Speaker 1: kinds of animals, especially cats, because it's a refuge from
24:05
Speaker 1: the brutality and all the all the terrible behavior they
24:09
Speaker 1: have to accept from men. That's and that's crazily enough.
24:14
Speaker 1: That's the positive spin. There's a negative spin here as well.
24:18
Speaker 1: Oh boy, is there ever? And I just want to
24:20
Speaker 1: say that this, this, this, the thing you just described
24:22
Speaker 1: is very much in keeping with that previous kind of
24:25
Speaker 1: notion of of like lower class for example, or you know,
24:29
Speaker 1: folks that don't have very much control over their lives
24:31
Speaker 1: being able to kind of like get that out or
24:34
Speaker 1: at least that frustration out by taking care of pets
24:37
Speaker 1: and feeling like superior. This takes it into a much
24:39
Speaker 1: more gendered and kind of offensive direction. Even the even
24:43
Speaker 1: the nice version that you just mentioned is a little
24:45
Speaker 1: bit sexist, the idea that women are lavishing all this
24:50
Speaker 1: attention on these animals because they're you know, less than
24:54
Speaker 1: or But then, you know, if you want to look
24:56
Speaker 1: at it in terms of the reality, I mean, it
24:58
Speaker 1: was a brutal time for women where men absolutely dominated
25:01
Speaker 1: all aspects of society and treated women like chattel essentially. Um.
25:07
Speaker 1: And of course leave it to men to to take
25:09
Speaker 1: this and turn it an even more of a horrible
25:11
Speaker 1: misogynist direction in saying that women and cats shared the
25:16
Speaker 1: same horrish disposition. Uh in some way they had qualities
25:23
Speaker 1: that were compared to sex workers or prostitutes what they
25:27
Speaker 1: would have called um just another way of of kind
25:31
Speaker 1: of like you know, keeping keeping women down, uh and
25:35
Speaker 1: using this thing that might have been a nice respite
25:38
Speaker 1: from you know, the horrors of male dominated society, uh,
25:44
Speaker 1: and turning it around as another way of kind of
25:46
Speaker 1: mothering women and saying, yeah, of course you're hanging out
25:49
Speaker 1: with cats. So there's there's a quote here one of
25:52
Speaker 1: worn people, this aged like milk. Uh. In eighteen fifty
25:58
Speaker 1: five author i'll Fonse Tilsonell said, an animal so keen
26:04
Speaker 1: on maintaining her appearance, so silky, so tiny, so eager
26:08
Speaker 1: for caresses, so ardent and responsive, so graceful and supple.
26:12
Speaker 1: An animal that makes the night her day, and who
26:15
Speaker 1: shocks decent people with the noise of her orgies can
26:18
Speaker 1: only have one single analogy in the world, and that
26:21
Speaker 1: analogy is of the feminine kind. And he goes on
26:25
Speaker 1: and on and on. Uh. And then at the very
26:28
Speaker 1: end he says, of whom are we writing of the
26:32
Speaker 1: cat or the other? Meaning women? This guy must have
26:36
Speaker 1: been a lot of fun at parties and first dates. Yeah, no,
26:41
Speaker 1: no doubt about it. Uh. He went on to to
26:43
Speaker 1: double down and added lazy and frivolous and spending entire
26:47
Speaker 1: days and contemplation and sleep while pretending to be hunting
26:51
Speaker 1: mice referring to cats. I'm assuming not women in capable
26:55
Speaker 1: of the least effort when it comes to anything repugnant,
26:59
Speaker 1: but into fact aligable when it is a matter of pleasure,
27:02
Speaker 1: of play, of sex, love of the night. Guess, guys,
27:07
Speaker 1: a real piece of work. The other here is women yep, yep.
27:13
Speaker 1: And then he goes on to talk about either the
27:16
Speaker 1: cat or the human females, ingratitude and aridity of hearts.
27:22
Speaker 1: I think I think Alphonse had some stuff to work out.
27:27
Speaker 1: I think at the end he didn't know which he
27:30
Speaker 1: was accusing of what. But anyhow, this leads us into
27:34
Speaker 1: the idea of the crazy cat lady. So it may
27:38
Speaker 1: have started, of course with the concept of witches and
27:42
Speaker 1: familiars in the fifteen hundreds in Europe at least, but
27:46
Speaker 1: by the late seventeen hundreds we see the emergence of
27:51
Speaker 1: what will become the modern cat lady stereotype. Around this time,
27:56
Speaker 1: as many as one out of five women would not
27:59
Speaker 1: end up being married, and again a very misogynistic time
28:03
Speaker 1: when women were evaluated as worthy or unworthy based on
28:09
Speaker 1: their whether or not they were married. So this was
28:12
Speaker 1: a huge problem in England at the time. The Protestant
28:16
Speaker 1: Reformation of the fifteen forties had made convents no longer
28:21
Speaker 1: really a thing. So if you are uh the the
28:25
Speaker 1: head of a household. You can't just send your unmarried
28:29
Speaker 1: daughters off to the convent anymore. And there's a rock
28:34
Speaker 1: and a hard place situation, because also it's unseemly if
28:39
Speaker 1: you're a woman for you to work. So unmarried women
28:42
Speaker 1: became like the way cats were characterized earlier. They became
28:46
Speaker 1: treated like appendages of their relatives households, and they were
28:51
Speaker 1: called that's where they you know, they were called spinsters
28:53
Speaker 1: and things like that. Uh, And they often led lives
28:57
Speaker 1: even if they were financially well to do and didn't
29:00
Speaker 1: have to worry about food or having shelter. Uh, they
29:04
Speaker 1: were often living these pretty isolated, unhappy lives, you know. Yeah, yeah,
29:12
Speaker 1: I mean it's it really is kind of a self
29:13
Speaker 1: fulfilling prophecy, right. I mean, they're absolutely treated like second
29:17
Speaker 1: class citizens. They're not given the opportunities to take care
29:20
Speaker 1: of themselves, and then they ultimately become this kind of like,
29:24
Speaker 1: uh source for ridicule, like as as as if they
29:28
Speaker 1: have done something wrong or as if this is like
29:30
Speaker 1: a choice that they've made. It's it's really pretty disgusting.
29:34
Speaker 1: So you had this kind of type emerge and and
29:37
Speaker 1: the most iconic version historically of the cat lady is
29:42
Speaker 1: someone by the name of Gertrude Savill's who lived in
29:44
Speaker 1: the time of King George in England. Um. And it
29:48
Speaker 1: was kind of seen as the archetype of of the
29:51
Speaker 1: of the cat lady, and was parodied in cartoons and
29:54
Speaker 1: was kind of seen as the prototypical cat lady. Moving
29:57
Speaker 1: into the Victorian era, the stereotypes of the old maid
30:01
Speaker 1: and like, you know, bevy of like feline counterparts became
30:06
Speaker 1: such a kind of running gag that in an eighteen
30:09
Speaker 1: eighty issue of The Dundee Courier. Uh, they declared that quote,
30:14
Speaker 1: the old maid would not be typical of her class
30:16
Speaker 1: without the cat, but one cannot exist without the other,
30:21
Speaker 1: so that they were inextricably linked. Um. And you know,
30:25
Speaker 1: cats were at this time even viewed like we view
30:30
Speaker 1: them today, largely as being pretty pretty clever, very self involved,
30:36
Speaker 1: again the idea of not really needing humans. But on
30:39
Speaker 1: the other hand, the spinsters or the old maize were
30:41
Speaker 1: seen as being somehow like kind of insane or eccentric, uh,
30:49
Speaker 1: you know, having burned all their bridges and squandered all
30:52
Speaker 1: their opportunities. Um. The term blighted hopes was used in
30:56
Speaker 1: that Dundee Courier article, and here's here's a full quote.
31:00
Speaker 1: Old maids and cats have long been proverbially associated together,
31:03
Speaker 1: and rightly or wrongly, these creatures have been looked upon
31:06
Speaker 1: with a certain degree of suspicion and aversion by a
31:09
Speaker 1: large proportion of the human race. There's nothing at all
31:12
Speaker 1: surprising in the old maid choosing a cat as a
31:15
Speaker 1: household pet or companion. Solitude is not congenial to human nature,
31:19
Speaker 1: and a poor forlorn female shut up in a cheerless garret,
31:23
Speaker 1: brooding all alone over her blighted hopes there it is,
31:26
Speaker 1: would naturally center her affections on some of the lower animals,
31:30
Speaker 1: and none could be more congenial as a pet and
31:33
Speaker 1: companion than a kindly purring pussy. I conjecture that etymologically speaking, uh,
31:39
Speaker 1: this would be part of the reason, around the same
31:43
Speaker 1: time that we uh, that we see the emergence of
31:47
Speaker 1: that slang word for Jeditalia because of that association. Now
31:52
Speaker 1: I was thinking the same thing, Okay, okay, I think
31:54
Speaker 1: this is the perfect place to take a pause. Uh.
31:57
Speaker 1: And and we'll resume this two parter on Thursday. In
32:00
Speaker 1: the meantime, huge thanks to super producer Casey Pegram, Alex
32:03
Speaker 1: Williams who composed our theme, Gabe Bluesier researcher Extraordinarire, big
32:08
Speaker 1: big thanks to Christopher Hasciota's big big thanks to Eve's
32:12
Speaker 1: Jeff co we need to have back on the show again. Uh,
32:15
Speaker 1: and of course, as always big thanks to our own
32:19
Speaker 1: indoor outdoor cat, Jonathan Strickland, a k a. The Quizter. Uh.
32:24
Speaker 1: Go ahead, feel free to send some of your pet
32:29
Speaker 1: pictures our way. You can find us on the internet.
32:32
Speaker 1: Go to Facebook dot com type in Ridiculous Historians. That
32:37
Speaker 1: is our shows community page. All you have to do
32:40
Speaker 1: is answer a question uh, something very easy like identifying
32:44
Speaker 1: super producer Casey Pegram, my pal, Noel or myself or
32:48
Speaker 1: just you know, make us laugh, have a pun uh,
32:50
Speaker 1: and then you can You can find the show on
32:53
Speaker 1: Instagram and Twitter as well. It's probably gonna be more
32:56
Speaker 1: enjoyable to follow us as individuals. That's correct. You can
32:59
Speaker 1: find me on Instagram where I am at how Now,
33:01
Speaker 1: Noel Brown, how about you sarn folks, cat fanciers and
33:05
Speaker 1: cat haters alike. You can find me and message me
33:09
Speaker 1: or pet pictures directly. I am at Ben Bulling on Instagram.
33:12
Speaker 1: I'm at Ben Bulling hs W on Twitter. I sweird
33:16
Speaker 1: that the Egyptian word for cat is now. Yeah, it's weird,
33:21
Speaker 1: but also it makes too much sense. Uh. And hey,
33:24
Speaker 1: while you're on the internet, when I leave a review
33:26
Speaker 1: on Apple podcast or your podcast platform of choice, but
33:30
Speaker 1: preferably Apple Podcast, it helps people discover the show and
33:33
Speaker 1: helps us, uh, you know, feel good about ourselves when
33:35
Speaker 1: we say nice things. We'll see you next time, folks.
33:46
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I
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Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to
33:52
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.