Understanding the cat story of the 2024 presidential election

The cat lady. Sometimes she’s crazy, sometimes she’s childless, but one thing is clear: she’s never portrayed as someone you want to be.

In the 2024 presidential election, the archetype played a major role on both sides of the ballot.

A few months ago, a 2021 interview with JD Vance surfaced on Fox News when he was running for U.S. Senate in Ohio. He said the country is run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are unhappy with their own lives and the choices they’ve made and therefore want to make the rest of the country unhappy too.”

At the time he wrote it, the comment was still fairly unreviewed. When an excerpt from the interview made it back into the mainstream media three years later, everything was different. Vance was the Republican vice presidential nominee and Harris, whom he had previously called a “childless cat lady,” was on the path to becoming the Democratic presidential nominee.

In 2014, Harris married the second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, and became the stepmother to Emhoff’s two children from his first marriage, Cole and Ella.

In August, Vance said in an interview with Meet the Press that the comment was “sarcastic” and that “many Democrats intentionally misinterpreted it.”

But the damage was already done. It became a rallying cry for voters. Many celebrities also used the insult as a tool of 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 usually went 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 president rescued the nominee its course 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 headlines recently as 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 August 26, 2023, Afton disappeared from the Walz home in St. Paul. Afton was known for venturing outside so often that he had to get an Apple AirTag.

But when he went missing, Afton somehow took off his AirTag. Since then there has been no information about his whereabouts.

A few months later, the Walz family welcomed Honey, who looks uncannily like Afton. The orange tabby has a slightly whiter coloring than the previous first cat.

Walz, a self-described cat person, responded to Vance’s comments at a rally in Michigan.

“It’s not like I didn’t warn these guys a few months ago: if you mess with cat people, you’re going to find out. They’ll find out,” Walz said. “They did. That’s a nice strategy for getting involved with cat people.”

From easy to signposted

Minnesotans took note. In addition to the countless Harris Walz signs that adorn the lawns of the Twin Cities, a new sign design came from Minneapolis, the city that also hosts the highly anticipated Wedge cat tour, Cats for Kamala.

Sisters Leslie and Nina Hale placed an order for 50-yard signs in Michigan shortly after Walz’s comments. They started with just friends and family and soon everyone in their neighborhood was begging for one. They sold about 400 signs.

Nina and Leslie are both cat owners and initially said they thought the term’s recovery would die down. They have a third sister, Jocey, who is allergic to cats.

They’ve had dog lovers come in to buy signs, and they even say a self-described Republican said he just loved the sign even though he still planned to vote for Trump.

The Hales say they agree with Walz: Don’t mess with cat people.

“It is so insulting to assume that people who don’t have children have no interest in our future. Of course that’s not the case,” said Nina. “And then limiting it to cats only makes the insult worse.”

The “Cats for Kamala” signs were distributed on the honor system, with recipients paying via Venmo. While they have enjoyed their new venture, it has been busy.

Nina and Leslie don’t plan on ordering more “Cats for Kamala” signs – they feel like they’ve made their point. They have sent out the PDF of the sign design to those interested and it is also available for purchase on Etsy.