Cats – answering only to themselves, loving only whom they choose, roaming, watchful, adept at making seemingly impossible leaps, soft-footed yet claw-tipped – have been alternatively reviled and worshipped for millennia.
Historically the companion of witches, single women and crones – a byword for female sexual anatomy – cats are powerful and political and difficult to pin down.
No wonder weak men fear them and women have long aligned with them. Autonomous creatures have always been a threat to the patriarchy. Gloria Steinem’s advice to young girls at a women’s conference in 2017 was to act like a cat. “Cats don’t let you touch them. Cats tell you what they’re going to do, and that’s that.”
In a world where a convicted felon and sexual predator can be elected President of the United States and can ‘Grab ‘em by the pussy’ without consequence, where a politician can decry a ‘childless cat lady’ as if it is an insult, we at Violet will continue celebrating our independence and nurturing our shared connection to our fellow animals, to nature, to each other. This is where true power lies.
