Daily Diary, July 13, 2022, Day 681:
While cats don’t play a role in my new novella, Mrs. Stein Solves a Crime (which should be available by this weekend), in an earlier Historical Tidbits on Animals as Pets, that focused on dogs, I promised to talk about Victorian attitudes towards cats. So here goes.
One researcher on Victorians and their pets, wrote, “Many people kept cats during the Victorian period and felt affectionate towards them, but they were still very much seen as utility animals, which kept mice and vermin down. As a result, cats weren’t as well-fed as other pets and developed a reputation for being sly and calculating. This wasn’t helped by their traditional association with witches. ‘It’s only in the 20th century that cats start to be seen wholeheartedly as pets.’”
On the other hand, another article on Victorians and animals argues that the way in which cats kept homes free of vermin, plus their fastidious attention to keeping themselves clean (in contrast to dogs!) meant that advertisers often used cats and kitten in their advertisements for household goods like soap. This, in turn, reinforced the idea that there was a particular affinity between women and cats since the home and keeping things clean was seen as women’s special realm.
In addition, middle class women who were becoming involved in reform were often behind the movements to end the ill-treatment of animals.
However, this article also suggests that men who were interested in attacking women in the 19th century often equated cats and women in a negative fashion. For example, instead of the attention a cat paid to grooming themselves as a symbol of how clean they were, cats were portrayed as vain and promiscuous—like women. Made me think that I should give the new cat in the O’Farrell Street boardinghouse a larger role. As for the work on my science fiction series, I can assure you that Silence, the sentient snow cat will continued to play a major role! Meanwhile, here is an example of one of the 19th century ads that used cats.