Animal House
Contemplating creatures and public life while awaiting news of the White House Cat
Last November, I dropped everything to devote my undivided attention to season 4 of “The Crown.” At some point I wondered aloud on Twitter how and whether the series might be any different if the Windsors were a family of house cats. The most obvious similarity is their shared love of hunting, which is enjoyed for sport with the knowledge that plentiful food always awaits at mealtime. Then there’s a general sense of hauteur, paired with stunned bafflement at people who misunderstand protocol, or fail to meet inscrutable expectations in other ways. And finally there’s their shared legacy of grand portraiture, in which the Windsors, like the Hanoverians before them, are arriviste compared with domestic cats, who have been immortalized and linked to divinity in works of art since at least Ancient Egypt. If a taste for game, anti-intellectualism, and an attraction to cozy fireplaces are any guide, an all-cat “Crown” might need nothing more than a bit of dialogue coaching and an outside-the-box approach to period costuming.
Yet the Windsors are dog and horse people. Though the practice of breeding and showing purebred cats originates in Victorian Britain, dogs and horses are the creatures that loom largest in aristocratic culture thanks to their roles in show jumping and hunting. Animals without jobs have long been status symbols; non-working animals (who have their own, adorable categories like “Non-Sporting,” “Toy,” and “Miscellaneous” here in America) are, strictly speaking, drains on the household, whereas livestock or hunting dogs help put food on the table. Animal fancies and dog and cat shows emerged in concert with a growing obsession with breeding in the mid-19th century. This interest wasn’t exactly new, but it was reenergized by the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859, and more broadly the way that industrialization was starting to decouple aristocratic status from wealth.
The Windors famously “work at play,” transfiguring hunting, riding, gardening, and other outdoorsy escapades into scheduled endeavors with their own wardrobes and kits of equipment. They wake up early, approach activities seriously, seem to enjoy them, and in performing them for us, they try to position themselves in contexts that evince the traits they wish to project: they seem practical, rugged, and unpretentious. They’re busy stewards of the land and landscape they love; plaid, bacon sandwiches, thermoses of tea, and all. American WASPS do this too: George W. Bush’s near-fanatical devotion to clearing brush on his Texas ranch was not for lack of access to a capable local landscaper from Angie’s List.
Curiously though, Bush 43 was the last American president to have a cat in the White House: a black shorthair with green eyes who, like one of Lord and Lady Mountbatten’s granddaughters, was named India. Cats have lots of skills, and they certainly qualify as working animals in the areas where they excel (rodent mitigation first and foremost) but the fact that there’s no such thing as a “working group” in purebred cat shows tells you all you need to know about their ambitions: they’ll do it, but they work off the books, on their own schedule, and have no interest in coordinating their activities with you, thank you. In other words, they exist and do their thing as a monarch does, and their activities might happen to benefit you, but their work won’t be done in response to demands like a person with a profession (horrors) or an elected official.
One of the small joys of 2021 is the news that dogs have returned to the White House: German Shepherds and all-around lovely boys Champ and Major Biden recently got to enjoy their first snow day at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Already things seem brighter, more humane—even dignified. Dogs are naturals in official American settings, while cats seem to own the territory of unintended Zoom cameos and photos that help explain why the laptop cannot be accessed at this time. Simply put, they can be encouraged, but not trained. Dogs rule the outside world and public life: we see them walking along the sidewalk on our socially distanced excursions, playing in dog runs, doing official work in airports and train stations. When my husband and I landed in Auckland, New Zealand for the first time a few years ago, the first non-human creatures we encountered there were snack-sniffing dogs trained to find evidence of foreign produce and foodstuffs hidden in travelers’ carry-on bags. (The one we met was a beagle.)
There’s long been a sort of ambivalence in the press about White House cats, while dogs are generally perceived to be appropriately presidential. But cats have occupied the White House dozens of times dating as far back as the administration of Abraham Lincoln, and even the performatively rugged Teddy Roosevelt had a pet cat. Some observers were puzzled by the fact that the famously non-bookish Bush 43 had a cat because “cat people” are perceived (accurately or not) as more shy, less outdoorsy, more contemplative, less athletic; more bluestocking, and less ‘Windsor.’ In an exceedingly rare bipartisan moment on Pet Twitter in 2018, photographs of Bush 41’s service dog Sully attending the late president’s casket elicited waves of appreciation for the quintessential, heart-rending dog-ness of the moment: the total devotion and fidelity of dogs to their people that never fails to move or amaze us. The photo’s caption, “Mission Complete,” was simple and so poignant.
Cats can be “of service” in a very real sense, purring with patients in hospitals and providing companionship to people with sensory challenges, but they aren’t wired to obey commands per se. That’s partly what makes the promise of a new White House Cat so enticing. Take the example of Fat Cat Art, a brilliant art project in which great paintings are slyly edited to include the image of a substantial, nonchalant orange tabby named Zarathustra by his genius human, the graphic designer Svetlana Petrova. Zarathustra is seen to drape casually over a tree with the melting clocks in a version of Salvador Dalí’s “The Persistence of Memory,” or perch snugly on Napoleon’s lap and holding a scepter in Petrova’s take on “Napoleon on His Imperial Throne” by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Cats calmly adapt to wherever situation they find themselves in, and cannot comprehend the idea of imposter syndrome.
Champ and Major are probably alert to commands much of their waking hours, eager to please the Bidens, and will probably enjoy their time in Washington being very good boys. The White House Cat, depending on which areas he or she is allowed to explore, may well end up self-installed inside the holiday gingerbread house display this December. Part of having cats at home means accepting that to some extent, they’re going to do what they’re going to do, and your upholstery might not survive. That’s one counterintuitive way in which they emphasize our humanity: to care for them and help them thrive, you have to let go of control and perfection, and simply appreciate their affections, acrobatics and dainty lunacy for all the joy it brings into your world. Like us—though it can be hard to remember—their worth does not depend on the performance of a task, or being good at something; they just are, and we love them. Given what we’ve all been through these past few years, I think we deserve it, and we can let the White House Curator worry about the antiques for a while.
Hilarious. So well-observed.