An out-and-proud childless cat lady, I do not own a pussyhat to prove my allegiance to felines…or to other women. Not that it would be especially advisable to wear one in the Texas summer heat. But the political zeitgeist almost demands that I get one, if only to celebrate Kamala Harris’ brilliant takeover of the political limelight from the unhinged ex-president, current Republican presidential candidate and convicted felon known as #45.

Pussyhats first appeared in all their pink glory at the January 2017 Women’s March on Washington, a mass protest against #45 and everything he stood for including social regressivism and the curtailment of women’s rights. If I think of pussyhats now, it is because I, like millions of other cat ladies, have been hissing and spitting at the remark made by J.D. Vance, #45’s equally mad and unsavory VP pick. His too-loyal wife recently called it a mere “quip” meant to explain a larger point about political inclusion. We cat ladies beg to differ.

In 2021, Vance told former Fox News political commentator Tucker Carlson, that America is run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices they’ve made and '[now want to] make the rest of country miserable, too.” When that comment resurfaced at the end of last month, it unwittingly gave birth to what I call the Great American Cat Lady Moment.

To this particular cat lady, our moment seems an almost inevitable outcome of many things, not the least of which was the 2017 Women’s March on Washington. Not that the people at the March happened to be cat ladies (or even female for that matter). But if they were female, they all had one thing in common: a need to express years— centuries, even—of pent-up rage against continuing patriarchal injustice. The knitted, pointy-eared caps they wore were just a uniting symbol that, along with its feline connotations, also happened to be one that had a long association with femaleness and femininity.

My first personal encounter with pussyhats came a year after they first appeared. On January 20, 2018, demonstrators in Austin staged a protest—one of many that had continued to take place all over the United States and world—against #45 and the ever-changing cast of shady characters that constituted his administration. Perhaps I had heard about the Austin protest; I don’t remember. What I do recall was that it was a Saturday, that I had errands to run and that when I got off the bus to do them, I was immediately caught in a massive swirl of people, noise and energy.

At the time and despite my profound distaste for #45, I still dared to call myself mostly apolitical. His female opponent, Hillary Clinton, had also alienated me. Yes, she was a woman and a feminist. But I wasn’t automatically with HER just because of these things. I well knew she had done more in her fifteen years as a politician than her (mostly male) colleagues had done in a lifetime. But a troubling trail of scandals dogged her, made me feel I just couldn’t trust HER enough to exercise my nineteenth amendment voting rights. The same ones I took for granted enough to ignore out of disgust with a two-party system that didn’t offer much beyond empty promises for working people and the middle class, political gridlock and entrenched neo-liberal corruption.

But something in my attitude began to change that day. The people-swirl eventually pushed me toward large contingent of pussyhatted women carrying signs with slogans like stop regulating my body and women pay the price for decisions made by men. Suddenly, my errands—whatever they may have been—didn’t matter. An election had been stolen; rights were in jeopardy. Mesmerized by the colorful anarchy I saw around me and the unabashed fierceness of the female protestors, I cast off my complacency and followed the crowd from the 3rd Street bus stop to down to the waterfront, where I watched marchers make their towards Congress Street then up to the green mall of the Texas State Capitol.

Eventually the demonstrations stopped, not just in Austin, but around the country. Pussyhats got put away (though the anger festered) and a good, decent man defeated #45. But what the decent man couldn’t undo was the damage #45 had done to things like the Supreme Court, which eventually did the unthinkable and overturned more than 50 years of progress in laws protecting civil and reproductive freedoms. And damage to an already broken political system and to #45’s own party, which he transformed into a bastion of white supremacist, christo-fascist cult that deified him and worshipped the capitalist excesses he represented.

Even now, as a presidential nominee, #45 continues his reign of chaos alongside a running mate who spews as much hateful and ill-considered rhetoric as he does. Where women are concerned, both seem unaware that women—and cat ladies—have long memories. And they will always find ways—like the pussyhat—to communicate their displeasure. The brainchild of two California women, pussyhats began as a project that was both practical and political. The pair wanted to help keep heads warm during the notorious cold of January inauguration. But they also wanted to use a traditional—and maligned—“feminine” color (pink) along with “feminine” crafts (knitting and crocheting) to make a statement about the power of collective female action.  

They were, in other words, doing far more than cat lady cos-play. Pussyhat protestors were putting the Usurper-in -Chief on cheerful pink notice: we know who you are, we know what you’ve done, and we won’t let you forget. The hats—which were as unique and individual as the thousands of women who made them—transformed them into avengers of female sexuality, while transforming the pussies #45 had once gloated were his to grab-because he was rich, because he was famous, because he was a man—into sites of public contestation.

It was a contemporary version of an old fight. Fifty years before, second wave feminists had done something similar when they followed the advice of the groundbreaking 1972 Boston Women’s Health Book Collective guide, Our Bodies, Ourselves, and used mirrors to inspect their own vulvas. If the book reminded women that you are your body and you are not obscene, pussyhats reminded the world them that female bodies deserved respect.

As hand-made symbols of women’s autonomy, pussyhats also served a secondary purpose of critiquing the hypermasculinist homogeneity implied by mass-produced MAGA hats. The pink of compassion contrasted with the red of violence, as much a component of the MAGA brand as post-truth lunatic idiocy. And the crude triangular ears of every pussyhat remembered cats, and whether consciously or not, the long history that bound women and felines together in companionship and even magic.

I like to think that pussyhats, though apparently “tame” in looks, also quietly channel an energy that is less domesticated cat and more untamed puma or panther. Millennial pop icon Taylor Swift, who was recently drawn into the cat lady controversy by virtue of being a single, cat-owning female and self-made billionaire, exemplifies that powerful independence. In 2023, and as Time magazine’s person of the year, she posed for a cover-shoot that featured her and one of her beloved felines. By celebrating who she was, she was also suggesting, through her black leotard and tights and a hand curved into something like a cat’s claw, that she was powerful. A cat lady who remembered the indomitable Cat Woman, a single female who owned and wielded her sexuality without fear or shame. And without apology for not choosing to have children.

Taylor Swift certainly does not exemplify any kind of “cat lady misery” that I can see. As an entertainer, she brings joy and optimism to a young global audience burdened by more than its fair share of pessimism about everything from politics and the economy to climate change. She has freely chosen and embraced her path as a single, childless person as have countless other females. Regardless of whether or not we have cats.

But if we do, so much the better. Felines tie us to so much, like memories of resistance and the magic collective action can spark. Unlike Taylor Swift, we cat ladies may be mostly invisible. But we are legion and wield far more influence on the collective female psyche than people realize. Uninformed—and frankly misbegotten—public figures may imply that our choices leave us without a stake in America’s future. What they forget that we have do have a stake. And that together, we have the power to drive that stake straight through the twisted hearts of those who try to oppress us. Because we have claws and we have teeth.

And we grab back.