Lovejoy - Cat Lady Chic

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

BY Diane Lovejoy

When I first realized I was heading rapidly down the road to becoming a Cat Lady, I did not have my full wits about me. I guess you could say I was rather naive, as I had not foreseen that this road would resemble a minefield, and that navigating it would require me to develop a thicker skin. Because I was entirely comfortable thinking of myself as a Cat Lady, I was unprepared for the onslaught of invective and mean-girl insults that would rise to the surface at any moment.

Still, I knew I loved cats dearly, and that was all that mattered. To me, Cat Lady was an auspicious nickname, and I never failed to respond whenever called. In fact, Cat Lady became my clarion call to action.

I suspect that I initially bored my friends, colleagues, and family members with my endless monologues about the joys of caring for multiple cats. At one point in time, I lived with a group of ten: Lucius, Lydia, Lillie, Leo, Linus, LB, TJ, Perkins, Miss Tommie, and Alvar. Invariably, the most vocal naysayers among the people I knew would interrupt me to ask, Got it, but are you on board with the image that the Cat Lady brings to mind? Cue the ominous organ music that accompanies a silent horror film, because the Cat Lady cometh.

I wondered increasingly about the conventional unflattering image of the Cat Lady. Did a crazed scientist invent her? Did she materialize as the figment of a writers fertile imagination? Was she a composite figure put together by a traumatized sociologist? I longed for the authentic Cat Lady to please stand up.

The cultural image of the Cat Lady runs deep, to the extent that she could serve as the un-womans ambassador. Have you noticed how often the negative prefix un- is attached to so many adjectives describing the Cat Lady? She is perceived as an unsightly woman: unkempt, unfashionablehardly a style maverick. The Cat Lady is typically unmarried, always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Put bluntly, the Cat Lady is woefully alone, a borderline hermit who comes unhinged easily but gets quickly into her comfort zone when she feeds stray cats. Cat Ladies may require a room of their own, one to share with their presumed hordes of felines. But, for supposedly obvious reasons, Cat Ladies do not need man caves in their homes.

The common assumption is that, because the Cat Lady lives without a man or a child, her colonies of cats fill a vast void. Clearly, the odds are stacked against the Cat Lady, who might as well have joined the ranks of the witches, trolls, and hags who inhabit the fanciful tales collected by the Brothers Grimm.

And then there is the Crazy Cat Lady, who is the butt of simplistic jokes and a recurring figure in syndicated comic strips, but a role model to many who appreciate, as I do, that women who are crazy for cats are probably not so different in their psychological makeup from men who are rabid sports fans. Cmon, Cat Ladies, dont we deserve to be on a level playing field with rowdy guys? Fervent passions and slightly eccentric obsessions keep life interesting and unpredictable. Nonetheless, it admittedly takes some fancy footwork to dance around the triple negative of Crazy Cat Lady, and I cringe when I hear those three words. In fact, most of my friends who are Cat Ladies bristle at the characterization.

I knew from the get-go that I did not fit neatly inside the frame that has come to box in the Cat Lady of lore (and yore). When I adopted my first stray cat, Lucius, more than fourteen years ago, I had already been happily married to my husband, Michael, for twelve years. And while my career as an editor of museum publications and art books has never been accompanied by a salary that permits me to shop at Chanel and other high-style emporiums, I was always pleased to be complimented on my wardrobe choices. I was a married and fashion-loving career woman who was not embarrassed to disclose her love affair with felines. I liked being utterly Cat Ladylike.

While I was rescuing catsseventeen during four bliss-filled, albeit logistically challenging, yearsand each one was revealing to me something new about myself, I became determined to rescue the Cat Lady from the Hall of Shame. I was eager to overturn the indictment against the Cat Lady, motivated by the maxim A womans work is never done. Yet a funny thing happened along the way on my myth-debunking mission. In spite of the derogatory image of the Cat Lady, I discovered a treasure trove of diverse images depicting chic Cat Ladies.

I questioned seriously why anyone could think that Cat Lady chic is an oxymoron. Not even close. My recovery work was going to be easier than I had anticipated. To my great delight, the chic Cat Lady was ever present. As indisputably as cats have nine lives, Cat Ladies throughout history have dressed to the nines.

My visually driven expedition has led me to artists and photographers archives, where I was struck repeatedly by the convergence of the wow and meow factors. Glitz! Glamour! Allure! Cat Ladies are beautiful people, too, on the right side of the velvet ropes that serve as lines of demarcation in what has forever been an image-conscious world. You either are a member of the club or you are not.

I have it on authority that the Cat Lady is in. Granted, photographers are masters of artifice and sleight of hand, and I cannot overlook the fact that many of the images I have selected for this book were staged by photographers with specific female muses (and kitty quotas) in mind. A purist might argue that my handpicked images are manufactured, too. I am willing to concede that point. Yet the pictures gathered here collectively challenge the convenient, ultimately damaging image of the Cat Lady that has permeated society for far too long. I should also note that the images of chic Cat Ladies do not represent the after versions of the before-and-after transformations of women that are published regularly in fashion magazines. The camera focused on the Cat Lady does not lie: these superbly photogenic ladies did not go under the Photoshop knife, so to speak, to emerge in pictures with cats. In many cases, because of their classic beauty, the Cat Ladies were born chic. In other cases, chic can be defined as an empowering state of mind.

Artists throughout history have presented an equally attractive Cat Ladya woman who is poised, put-together, and supremely confident. Beauty is indeed skin-deep as well as in the eyes of the beholdersnot only we Cat Ladies, drawn to admire our predecessors and contemporaries, but also the cats themselves shown in the images. They are lucky creatures, assigned to front-row seats with their chic Cat Ladies.

In each instance, I believe that the woman who was photographed or painted or sketched assumes an additional auralets call it the Cat Lady halo effectbecause of the cat who is tucked beside her or rests at her feet, or who cuddles comfortably on her lap, or who is draped around her neck as grandly as an Herms silk scarf. The images also show fascinating resonances and kinships across the board: there are similar graceful gestures and positions to note among the ladies and cats. Elegant women cradle elegant cats. Savvy cats attract sophisticated ladies. In several photographs, Cat Ladies sweep their cats off the ground to meet their gaze, and they are virtually dancing cheek to cheek (or chic to chic).

Cats are notoriously fastidious creatures who like to preen and to be praised, if not worshipped, for their perfection. So it is only fitting that photographers and artists have frequently paired felines with irresistibly chic women who are accustomed to being admired.