Weekend Column: We’re Coming for You, JD Vance

By Andrea Sachs

Not to brag, but as a real-life childless cat lady on the UWS, I am supremely qualified to write this story. Yes, I check all the boxes: over the years, in succession, five rescued cats have spent their coddled lives on West 72nd Street with me. My bona fides include having Chewy.com’s 24/7 help number on my cell phone. As for being childless, it’s neither a badge of honor nor of shame to me. It’s just how the dominoes fell. 

Republican vice-presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, during his senatorial campaign in 2021, famously (and likely to his eternal regret) told Fox News host Tucker Carlson: “We are effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, 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.”  

When Vance’s words recently resurfaced, there was an immediate backlash by Democrats, feminists, feline fanciers — and me. The only thing I was personally miserable about was his statement! His popularity in the polls plummeted dramatically, and he almost drowned in a sea of cat memes on social media. Clearly, this was dangerous territory for an opinionated politician. As of 2020, nearly 47% of American women did not have children. Not to mention the fact that there are 47 million households in this country with pet cats.

Prolific author Gwen Cooper might well be called the literary patron saint of this cat-loving female cohort. If there were a Nobel Prize for cat literature, Cooper would have a lock on it. Her New York Times bestselling memoir about her blind cat, Homer’s Odyssey: A Fearless Feline Tale, has been published in 24 languages and has more than a million books in print worldwide. That’s not kibble, baby! Sorry — too many other bestselling titles to mention here. Cooper describes her 16-year marriage with writer Laurence Lerman as “happily child-free.” 

I reached out to Cooper for her thoughts on this campaign controversy. Naturally, she came out with both barrels blazing: “I find it telling that Vance was referring to both Democrat women and men [Pete Buttigieg] in his original quote — the very clear implication being that the only thing more insulting than comparing someone to a woman would be comparing them to a woman with cats. Ultimately, I fully expect people to make voting decisions based on the top of the ticket. Nevertheless, Vance’s ​attack on women who rescue animals is indefensible.”

It’s true that the PR for my sisterhood hasn’t always been flattering. Historically, witchcraft — a deadly serious criminal matter — was often associated with cats. In a typical case in 1324, Alice Kyteler was put on trial in Ireland for charges that included the accusation that she was in possession of an incubus that looked like a black cat. Legendary UWS author Edgar Allan Poe (who wrote the poem “The Raven” at his home on West 84th Street and Broadway) was a cat owner who penned a characteristically macabre short story entitled “The Black Cat” in 1843.

My own love for cats, which has resulted in an apartment full of cat tchochkes and art, has enhanced and informed my life. Too much so? Just after 9/11, I was lucky enough to interview Jane Goodall, the famed primatologist. Out of curiosity, I slipped in a personal query. “Why are pet owners so fond of their pets?” She looked at me like I was clueless, then declared in her distinctive British accent, “Because we’re animals, too.”

Got that, JD?

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