9 Reasons Why Carol Is Actually a Cat, Don’t @ Me

For everyone who has a pulse and has met Carol the dog will know that Carol is actually a cat. Here’s why:

1. Carol is a circle.

Many cats sleep in a circle, and so does Carol.

2. Carol dislikes most people.

Carol only likes a select handful of gay humans and everyone else can go SUCK ITTTT

3. Carol thinks shoes are alive.

Carol is particularly enamored with shiny, colorful and fast moving objects, just like cats get with string and shiny stuff. There isn’t a sneaker that Carol hasn’t tried to attack, and this is a true story. You can check my sources.

4. Carol is emo.

Carol spends a lot of time being extremely sleepy and emo, and cats are like that.

5. Carol is picky.

Ummmmmm dogs are normally just like, wolfing down their food no matter what right? I mean some dogs eat their own poop, so. You never know when Carol is going to turn up her nose to a bowl of food. There is no cyclical pattern, you cannot chart it, there’s no reasoning. It’s just her cat energy.

6. Carol is chill.

Carols whole vibe is like, very chill  95% of the time. The other 5% she’s launching herself at shoes, yelling because she can hear you coming from outside the apartment, and/or ricocheting back and forth when you walk through the door. She doesn’t really bark. Except for this one time that I guess she did bark when Riese and I left my apartment for like four hours to go to Cee’s birthday rave, and we came back and there was a note on my door that was like “your dog has been barking for hooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooours. that’s how long it feels like your dog has been barking” and I was like immediately mortified, because that’s just not like Carol, you know? But then I realized that Carol was being a bitch because the note was from this annoying lady who lives above me. She torrentially waters her outdoor plants on the balcony above mine and and the water like splashes through my screen windows and onto my computer. Also she wears shoes inside, with I think bricks attached to the shoes and walks around constantly so like, I think what’s happening here is that …

7. Carol is a bitch.

Carol will fight you if provoked. Carol is not a blindly trusting and tongue-out wagging kinda pup. Her trust is EARNED. And if you haven’t earned it, or worse, done something to be rude to one of her fave peeps, you’re IN FOR IT BUDDY. So: cat.

8. Carol is smOL.

Carol is so small you guys she’s just a tiny circle she was never ever going to be anything but the smallest circle in the whole land SORRYYYY. Cats are usually smol and dogs are historically big so that’s another reason why Carol is a cat.

9. Carol is a lesbian.

Everyone knows that all cats are lesbians and all dogs are straight, so.

This concludes my report on why Carol is a cat, not a dog. If you guys have any questions don’t ask me them. Bye.

BREAKING: There Is Another Dog In This Neighborhood and They Won’t Stop Barking!!!!

Hello it’s me Carol, editor-in-chief of Carolstraddle!!! I have my own wordpress login now and I would like to report some news. The news is that there is a dog barking VERY loud in an apartment building near my Mom’s! First of all I am offended that another dog exists, secondly this dog woke up my Mom who needs her beauty sleep at 7am instead of 8:30am when she wanted to wake up, thirdly this dog has been barking non-stop for five hours, and within the last hour, every other dog in this neighborhood has responded to this incident by barking in return. (Except me because I’m perfect) Now the whole block is just BARK BARK BARK. It’s like Oliver & Company in here but not as melodic or underrated and perfect.

We live in West Hollywood, home to the very dog-positive show “The Real L Word” that was on before I was born. I thought this was a gay neighborhood? Who are all these dogs being loud?! Sometimes my Mom says, “You’re so tiny, I bet you don’t even remember Obama.” I don’t know what she’s talking about but you know what I do remember? SILENCE.

I MADE A NEWS!!!!

dogs rule!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’VE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS BARKING WHEN I AM TRYING TO GET MY 22 DAILY HOURS OF SLEEP IN

Find Your Fit: A Small Lesbian Who Likes to Play With Gender

Find Your Fit is a style advice column helping real queer people find the masculine, butch, and tomboy styles that make them look and feel hot.

Dear Mika,

Hello and good day; I’m a longtime reader who’s ready to play with gender more intentionally in my outfits, but I’m not sure what that looks like. Flannel? Button downs? Dresses? I don’t know! Obviously my first thought for who to look to for inspiration was Carol the dog — she’s my favorite fashion icon and follow on Instagram, and I love how she moves seamlessly between femme, masc and androgynous looks. Like Carol, I am very small; like Carol, I would like to exude both stylistic edginess and an intriguing vulnerability. Can you help?

Yes, of course! You’re absolutely right; Carol is the perfect fashion icon for what you want, and she has so many looks to choose from. For you, I chose this range of three outfits: an edgy look with lots of color, a casual androgynous athletic fit, and of course a classic soft butch moment.

Carol Pride

1. Dress // 2. Bomber // 3. Sneakers // 4. Sunnies // 5. Bag // 6. Bracelet

Inspo:

Carol knows how to pull off a lot of color like no other. I wanted to create a fit that you could wear for a hot day out, or to go to pride, or if pride was at the beach — the point is summer color fun is our goal here.

Styling:

Wear this rainbow dress with this cute cropped bomber so you look a little tough and add that gay touch. Pair both of these pieces with these rainbow white trainers from ASOS to stay on color theme! Just like Carol who is tough yet very loving, I’ve picked these heart sunnies so you can capture the same energy. Because this dress is very tight to the body I assume you don’t have pockets; style this fit with a cross body bag so you don’t lose your stuff!

Material Girl

1. Top // 2. Pants // 3. Jacket // 4. Sneakers // 5. Bag // 6. Sunglasses

Inspo:

Do you remember when Madonna pretended she was British for a whole album in like 2006? For this fit I wanted to capture Carol’s take on a tracksuit and merge it a bit with britpop streetwear meets Hayley Kiyoko, who my sources tell me has stolen Carol’s look a few times.

Styling:

Since warm weather is coming I decided to toss out the full track jacket and swap it for a tee without losing sight of the famous three stripes. Pair this Adidas classic with this windbreaker to add a bit of texture to the fit; if it’s chilly zip it up all the way, if it’s not, wear it open. I’ve also picked these ‘ugly’ sneakers that magically go very well with this holographic, very gay-looking Zara cross body bag. Finish off the look with these literally fire sunnies.

Carol-drogyny

1. Flannel // 2. Tee // 3. Jeans // 4. Boots // 5. Hat // 6. Bag

Inspo:

No one moves across the femme/masc spectrum as well as Carol. For this final fit I wanted to capture her more relaxed lumberjack butch looks for that cozy chilly afternoon at the park — maybe you’re helping your crush move to a new apartment, or simply feeling a little Jughead today.

Styling:

If you don’t already have a flannel, as a gay you should never pay too much for one, so I picked this one from Target that looked EXACTLY like the one Carol is wearing. Pair it with a grey tee, and some black jeans, I’ve picked these ones from MNML because they add a little more edge. If you don’t already own some big ass Moc Toe boots I don’t want you to drop $300 on them, so these will work great. Pair it with a cute beanie and a backpack if you need one; you’re ready to go!

Welcome to Chez Carol

Obviously the broad generalizations about how women’s attitudes towards homemaking and babies shift after they turn 30 are baseless as a universal truth and often harmful. Also and additionally, almost immediately after turning 30 I picked up the hobby of window shopping for doll furniture and accessories to give to the pets in my life, frequently not even my own pets. We contain multitudes! Carol also contains multitudes, and one of her many facets is that she is a material girl living in a material world. Here are the chic, homey and stylishly functional home goods I have picked out for Carol to fully outfit her West Hollywood bungalow in preparation for its inevitable Apartment Therapy spotlight.

Couch Potato

1 Floral Couch // 2 Pink Polka Dot Sectional // 3 Upholstered Sofa Bed

Carol already spends a lot of time on human couches: entertaining guests, posing for Instagram, accompanying her mother during editorial conference call meetings, shivering. If Virginia Woolf were a small dog, however, she might have written that each small dog needs a couch of her own. Ranging from the fun n’ flirty to the iconoclastically vintage to the grown n’ sexy West Elm of small dogs, these couches are Carol-sized just for her. Also I believe the floral one opens up into some kind of jewelry storage, which is neat.

Working Girl

1 Desk Set // 2 TV Stand with Book Storage // 3 Office Supplies and Shelving // 4 Carol-Sized Macbook

Nearly tied with her primary hobby and interest of ‘shivering,’ Carol’s most important preoccupation in life is her mom, the CEO of Autostraddle dot com. With this ergonomic and stylish desk set, shelving to hold her reference books, and TV stand with which to watch and recap the shows pushing the envelope when it comes to representation of small dogs, Carol is all set to be just like her mom when she grows up, which will be never, because she is a small dog.

Make It Fashion

1 Framed Botanical Prints // 2 Hanging Plant // 3 Succulents // 4 Framed Photo of Mom

Carol doesn’t like to talk about it because she doesn’t want to sound gauche, but she’s really something of an influencer. For her to have the Instagram-worthy sun-drenched LA apartment to match her lifestyle, she’ll need this hanging plant, 18 different kinds of succulents, and also some framed prints of other plants to really drive the point home. And of course no apartment of Carol’s would be complete without a striking centerpiece of a framed photo of her mother, in this case cradling Carol’s previous incarnation, Tinkerbell (who shivered less but was also a purse).

Sweet Dreams

1 Trundle Bed // 2 Scalloped Doll Bed // 3 Canopy Bed

Carol’s days are long and grueling, between the shivering, going out for walks, and sometimes being carried to various social events where she is passed around between Riese’s friends laps and shivers in a new and exciting location. When it’s all over, she deserves to retreat to her private bedchambers. The bedroom is the most personal space in a home, and Carol’s bed should reflect her truest inner self, which is that she is a tiny princess. Whether it’s this fairy pink canopy bed, demure floral scalloped number, or the trundle bed with storage for Carol’s many fashion ensembles, she’ll drift off to dreamland with her brand intact.

Welcome to Carolstraddle!

Last year, my #2 Mom Erin wrote an article every day for 30 days about the movie “Carol,” which was named after me. When my #1 Mom Riese told my #3 Mom Sarah (I have lots of Moms, that’s lesbians for you!) that we needed a graphic for “30 Days of Carol,” Sarah though of course of the only Carol to have ever lived, and produced this graphic:

“Sarah that is a very adorable graphic!” Heather told Sarah, “but the carol posts are about carol the movie.”

“LOL. wow. y’all hahahahah,” said Sarah in return.

Everybody else moved on with their lives and days, as they so often do while I am stuck wondering things like, why is nobody scratching my belly right now? Why does Veggie Grill not deliver enough french fries for Erin and Stephanie for them to share them with me, Carol? Is it time to go outside now? How about now? Is my Mom going to look at me? If I stand on this table, will she look at me now? I love my blanket? Can we go outside? Name one dog who is prettier than me? Or even a cat?

But of course my number one question this whole time has been: “why not Every Day Some Carol????” I, Carol, am here every day!!!!!!! I show up. The couch upon which Erin wrote 30 Days of Carol — I also sit upon that couch, with my legs in any number of positions you would find inspirational and a model for how all dogs should look and sit. I was brought into Riese and Erin’s home less than a month before 30 Days of Carol. Coincidence? I think not!!!

So all the time that my Moms thought I was sitting around not contributing to the household (as my Mom frequently reminds me that I do not “have a job” and that “learning to take care of myself would be really empowering to me as a woman”) I have in fact been scheming for the day when I would take over Autostraddle. That day has come. That time is now. I’m so cute! Watch me roll around on my back and scoot my butt around. I run like the wind, the power of the stars and heavens behind me, my soul is eternal, my power is so big, like a chicken. I love chicken!

Fictional Cats, Ranked

There’s been even more talk of cats than usual in my life, due to Oatmeal the cat in Russian Doll and Chewie the cat in Captain Marvel winning over everyone’s hearts on the small and big screen these last few weeks. As I witnessed everyone’s rightful admiration of these majestic creatures, I realized that I — Autostraddle dot com’s self-appointed Cat Editor — never made an official ranking of fictional cats. And so today I have rectified that. I am eager to hear your agreement and disagreement on the list I have lovingly crafted for you in the comments. #Cats!

40. The Cheshire Cat, Alice in Wonderland

The Cheshire Cat wasn’t actually the invention of Lewis Carroll; historians think Carroll was basically describing this mad-looking cat carving that existed on the wall of Yorkshire’s Church of St Peter, Croft-on-Tees for some reason. In my estimation, this is the genesis of evil fictional cats, and I do not care for the stereotype!

39. M.A.D. Cat, Inspector Gadget

Dr. Claw’s Cheshire Cat lackey! I never met a cat who couldn’t think for herself. M.A.D. cat is damaging representation.

38. Tom, Tom and Jerry

I also never met a cat who would allow himself to be made a fool of this many times. Every cat I know would either catch Jerry on the first try or pretend Jerry didn’t exist.

37. Garfield, Garfield

I can’t think of Garfield without thinking of Garfield Minus Garfield and now he just bums me out. Existential angst, am I right?

36. Sauron, Lord of the Rings

Yeah, that’s right, in the original Lord of the Rings lore, Sauron was conceived as Tevildo, The Prince of Cats. Knowing that, you can look upon the Eye of Sauron as a cat’s eyeball or a flaming vagina. The choice is yours!

35. Streaky The Super-Cat, Supergirl

Streaky was Supergirl’s answer to Superman’s Krypto the Superdog. Supergirl actually created Streaky on accident by leaving out a piece of Kryptonite she was studying and when Streaky started messing with it, he got super-strength, super-vision, super-speed, heat vision, and super-intelligence. He ultimately joined the League of Super-Pets.

34. Azrael, The Smurfs

Azrael is really just another M.A.D. Cat, but I have a special affection for him because my first act of rebellion from the Baptist Church was sneaking around to watch The Smurfs even though my Sunday School teacher forbade it because Azreal was named after the Angel of Destruction.

33. Meowth, Pokémon

Meowth is so bad at being a villain. And why? Why is he always trying to steal Ash’s Pikachu? Just to impress Giovanni? Again, cats would never allow themselves to look so stupid, and repeatedly! Also, they would never call a human “the boss.”

32. Cat Suit Mario, Super Mario 3D World

Cat Suit Mario is like Tanooki Mario, but able to inflict way more damage! Plus you can also be Cat Suit Luigi, Cat Suit Toad, Cat Suit Princess Peach, and Cat Suit Rosalina.

31.Rachel’s Hairless Cat, Friends

Joey’s “It’s not a cat!” meltdown about Rachel’s hairless cat is my all-time favorite Friends gag.

30. Chewie, Captain Marvel (Goose from the Movie Is Below)

I don’t want to spoil too much for you, but, um, it’s not a cat!

29. Sylvia, Star Trek

Sylvia came closer to actually besting Kirk and Spock than Kahn ever did and that’s because Kahn is no cat!

28. Milo, Milo and Otis

Milo is a very good cat, but there are too many shades of The Fox and The Hound in his story for me to fully open up my heart to him.

27. Boo Boo Kitty, Laverne and Shirley

Shirley’s stuffed cat is named Boo Boo Kitty; it’s her constant companion/therapist, further proof this show was gay.

26. Taraji P. Henson Saying “Boo Boo Kitty,” Empire

Did you know Tarai P. Henson made this nickname up on the spot while filming? Danny Strong said he rewrote the line five times and couldn’t get it right and she just purred “Boo Boo Kitty” right out on the first take. Give this woman her damn Emmy already!

25. Oatmeal, Russian Doll

You’ve gotta be some kind of special to survive on the streets of New York City like that and maintain your cuddliness.

24. Cait Sith, Final Fantasy VII

Right, so Cait Sith is actually a robot, but it’s a cat robot riding a Moogle in the best Final Fantasy game. So boss.

23. Salem Saberhagen, Sabrina the Teenage Witch

If you were a witch who was punished for trying to take over the world, of course you would assume the form of a cat.

22. Miss Kitty Fantastico, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

No one in Sunnydale should be allowed to own pets, period.

21. Hello Kitty

Sanrio says Hello Kitty is a human girl and not a cat but that is madness and I am putting her on this cat list — where she belongs, due to being a cat — as a protest vote.

20. Rover, Animal Crossing

He helps you define your entire existence; and after you know who you are and are living your best life, he just wants to be your chatty pal.

19. Lord Tubbington, Glee

The co-host of Fondue For Two and an original Brittana shipper. One of the gayest cats in TV history.

18. Crookshanks, Harry Potter

Of course a cat noticed Ron’s rat was actually the shape-shifting form of the man who was responsible for the most evil wizard in history killing the parents of his best friend before Ron did.

17. Mrs. Norris, Harry Potter

Mrs. Norris might seem like a real jerk, but how would you feel if you were a cat whose owner had to chase Fred and George Weasley around Hogwarts for six years? You’d be grumpy as hell, too! If Mrs. Norris had discovered Peter Pettigrew’s secret, she’d never have been given a hero’s prize like Crookshanks.

16. Mr. Piddles, The L Word

Poor sweet thing. Murdered, by Ilene Chaiken, just like his mother.

15. Cake, Adventure Time

Cake is the Jake to Fionna’s Finn — a sister, an adventuring companion, a confidante, a sword fighter, a source of comic relief. Plus, she’s voiced by Roz Ryan, who you know best as Thalia, the Muse of Comedy in Disney’s Hercules. (Gonna shout it from the mountaintops, etc.)

14. Bagheera, The Jungle Book

I love Bagheera because he reminds me of my cat Dobby and I like to think if our roles were reversed, and I were a feral human, Dobby would take care of me the way Bagheera takes care of Mowgli.

13. Halle Berry’s Catwoman

12. Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman

11. Julie Newmar’s Catwoman

10. Eartha Kitt’s Catwoman

I will not argue about this ranking; it is correct.

9. Figaro, Pinocchio

What a star! He was meant to just be Geppetto’s pet, but he was so charismatic that he became Minnie Mouse’s cat and then made three cartoons of his very own and then had a cameo in Alice in Wonderland. He also had his own mini-comic and appeared in Mickey Mouse Clubhouse!

8. Cheetara, Thundercats

The only woman Thundercat, she’s always having to do emotional labor on Jaga, Lion-O, and Tygra. Plus, if it weren’t for her super-speed being able to get them out of harm’s way repeatedly, those dude cats would never have made it past episode one.

7. Thomas O’Malley, The Aristocats

Shane McMeowtcheon.

6. Cat Man Do, Powerpuff Girls

See, now this is exemplary cat-villain representation. The Powerpuff Girls think this cat is the unwitting experiment subject for a villain, but the cat is actually controlling the villain the whole time! Once they’ve “rescued” him, he hypnotizes the Professor and does some science and creates a laser beam that makes all cats within a 15-mile radius the heads of their households! It’s mayhem! They destroy furniture, they sleep wherever they want, they eat whatever they want! That’s cats!

5. Hobbes, Calvin and Hobbes

Oh you know, just the physical embodiment of the freedom and innocence of childhood. Only a cat could deal with that kind of pressure.

4. Mufasa, The Lion King

We all had to learn about the circle of life some time — who better to teach us? 😭

3. Catra, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

Just a traumatized soft butch dreamboat with trust issues who opened herself up to one person only, and then that person abandoned her to start a new life with a new found family. Bonus points for being the best dressed lesbian TV character of 2018.

2. Ginger, The Chronicles of Narnia

No photos of Ginger exist, but here is another person who got kicked out of Narnia. Reason: Being a woman.

Ginger the atheist cat didn’t get to enjoy Narnia’s post-Final Battle paradise because she reused to acknowledge Aslan as the Messiah because she didn’t care for his whole controlling, patriarchal deal.

1 1/2. Goose, Captain Marvel Movie

He freaks out a Skrull commander just by walking past him. He swallows his enemies whole. Also he — SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER!!! — handles that tesseract way better than Loki.

1. The Black Panther

Black Panther may have been robbed of its Oscar, but it will not be robbed of its deserved top spot on this list of cats! Wakanda forever!

How My Cat’s Anxiety Helped Me Be Gentler With Myself About My Own

I was 37 years old the first time a person suggested I should be gentle with myself — and it wasn’t even really a person; it was the disembodied voice of Andy Puddicombe, the guy inside the Headspace meditation app, which my therapist had practically downloaded onto my phone for me. “I know how to breathe,” I’d grumbled at her, after spending an hour detailing the panic attacks I was having multiple times a day, and how I was getting through them with my tried and true method of barking at myself to breathe. She shrugged. I scowled.

And so I was furious the first time I sat down with that app. I had actual work to do. So much actual work to do. My regular work, plus all the work that was piling up around me because I couldn’t make it through a single day’s to-do list because of my anxiety. The panic attacks were cutting into my productivity because it took time to actually have one and then extra time to stop being woozy and shaky afterward (though, at that point, I was having them so regularly I never quite fully recovered from the wooziness and shakiness before another one kicked in). And then there was the inability to focus because I was in a perpetual cycle of waiting to have medical tests and then waiting for the results of those medical tests and then waiting for more tests and then more results. Biopsies, ultrasounds, MRIs, bloodwork: Every day I was expecting some kind of call from some kind of doctor.

The point is, I didn’t have time to sit still and breathe. I could breathe while I was pacing around the living room Googling my symptoms on my phone. Kind of. I could kind of breathe. Sometimes. I’d only completely passed out once. Recently.

Meditation, as described by the adorable cartoon in the app, was so easy. All you had to do was close your eyes and focus only on your breath and then open your eyes three minutes later and — boom! — you’re a yogi.

But I couldn’t do it.

I could focus on my breath for an inhale or an exhale, but then I’d remember I hadn’t emailed back that freelancer or given edits to that staff writer and I was running out of time to get that recap written. Inhale. Like, yes, I was bleeding constantly and my uterus was “Hmm, bigger than I’d expect it to be for someone your age” my doctor had said. What did that “Hmm” mean? Was it like a curious hmm or was it like a cancer hmm? Was it—fuck. Exhale. Inha—Had I forgotten to get milk at the grocery store? Had I forgotten eggs too? Had I even eaten breakfa—goddammit. Exhale. Why was my nose whistling like that? Was I getting sick? Had the lump in my breast weakened my immune system? Argh! Inhale! Jesus, Heather, pay attention. It’s three fucking minutes. Can’t you do anything right right now? Christ. Exhale. Why is it so hot in here? I wonder what running the air conditioner this month is going to do to the power bill. Did I pay Verizon? I did, right? I’m sure I got a confirmation em—fuuuuck. Fuck. Fuck. Inhale! Exhale! Inhale!

“It’s natural for your mind to wander off,” Headspace Andy said in my ear, “When you notice that it has, gently return to your breath.”

Gently? Gently?! Why would I be gentle with myself when I was very clearly doing this thing — like so many other things in my life — wrong? No, I didn’t need gentleness. I needed more self-discipline, more conviction, more toughness. I needed to get my fucking shit together.

Headspace Andy said meditation wasn’t like whack-a-mole, that I didn’t need to frantically club my rogue thoughts over their head. He said meditation wasn’t like stabbing balloons with a needle or a knife. He said meditation wasn’t like lassoing a wild horse, or pinning down an angry monkey. All I had to do was just keep showing up, breathe, notice when my mind frolicked off, gently pull it back and focus on my breath, notice when it wandered off again, gently pull it back and focus on my breath. Just keep breathing. Just keep noticing. Gently.

I learned to sit still three minutes at a time, five minutes at a time, ten minutes, fifteen, twenty. Within a year, I could sit still for an entire hour if I wanted to.

The first time my mind wandered off and I chuckled and thought, “Come back here, Hoagie” my eyes popped open and bugged out of my head like a cartoon character. I could never, not once, remember ever thinking anything so kindly to myself, especially about failure.

And there’s the rub. It’s not failure for your mind to wander during meditation. It’s just part of meditating because it’s just part of being human because it’s just part of the way our brains have evolved. But when I’m meditating I’m meant to be focusing on my breath; and if my mind is wandering, I’m not focusing on my breath; and that is failure. Sure, I don’t have panic attacks very much anymore, and when I do, my recovery is swifter than it ever has been — but they’re still a part of my life. And yes, I’m now aware the absolute second my chest tightens and my muscles tense and my breathing shallows because of something I’m thinking or doing — but I don’t always nip my behavior or thought processes in the bud, even though I know that would have an immediate positive effect on my physical and mental well-being. And fine, I am now able to set boundaries and say no and communicate to other people how their behavior is affecting me because my mind is warmly acquainted with a default sense of calmness, so every decision doesn’t feel like fight-or-flight — but I still say yes too much and struggle under a pile of obligations I resent and write notes in my journal about “Stop trying to squeeze juice from a rock!!!!”

I worry. Worrying makes me worry more. I spiral. I fall asleep when I’m meditating. I can’t even focus on ten full breaths, sometimes, in an entire 45-minute sitting. My mind wanders into the dark woods and leaps off a cliff. I fail.

When I hung up the phone with the vet a few weeks ago, I looked over to where my cat Dobby was perched on the back of his armchair, staring at me with giant green eyes and enormous bat ears, and said, “Buddy, great news! It’s just anxiety.” He blinked. I nodded. “Well, ‘just’ anxiety.”

Dobby’d been losing weight, and fast. The vet did a physical exam and a fecal test and a urinalysis and couldn’t see anything wrong. But it also could be: thyroid, liver, intestines, stomach, kidneys. He shaved Dobby’s neck and drew a bunch of blood and sent it off to test for every possible thing. I explained that Dobby had been pacing a lot more than usual, yelling a lot more than usual, that he’d been acting out at his brother and sister. “Stacy’s been traveling a bunch for work,” I told the vet. “I think it’s making Dobby extra nervous.”

Emphasis on extra. Dobby came into our lives like his brothers and sisters, ushered onto the slab of concrete behind our house by his mom, who we’d found in an alley and adopted, from afar. Her name was Bobbi and we couldn’t touch her; she’d been feral her whole life. But with a lot of patience, she learned to trust us. We gave her food and water. We built her a winter shelter. She’d follow us, at a distance, when she saw us out on the sidewalk. “Let’s go home, Bobbi!” we’d call, and she’d trot along 30 paces behind us. It was over a hundred degrees outside when she brought her babies to us that summer. They wouldn’t let us touch them either, but we put out canned kitten food and so much water and named them from behind the screen door where we hid to watch them eat. Socks, Beth March, Frodo, Bobbi Jr., and Dobby.

Dobby was Dobby because of his eyes and ears, the physical resemblance to Harry Potter’s most beloved House Elf, but also because he clearly wanted to be so brave and was just absolutely terrified.

After I got certified by the ASPCA to trap them and had them spayed and neutered and treated for all their street cat parasites, we brought the Bobbis inside and started the long, slow process of trying to socialize them. Dobby was always two steps behind his siblings. We sat on the floor in their room, facing away from them, not talking. Everyone ate, but Dobby. We sat in the room, on the floor, not talking, with our hand on their bowl. Everyone ate, but Dobby. We put Gerber No. 2 chicken baby food on our fingers and held them out at a distance. Everyone licked it up, but Dobby. We stroked their backs with our fingertips, like a breeze, while they gobbled their meals. Everyone ate, but Dobby. We picked them up and moved them around their food bowl. We picked them up from a kneeling position. We picked them up from a standing position. Sometimes, when his brothers or sisters would be courageous enough to come over to get a pet, he’d run at them to try to stop them, screaming in terror.

Dobby walked in circles and circles and circles, pacing the days and nights away, refusing to get closer to us than he absolutely had to.

His socialization got fast-tracked when he and his brother and sisters were diagnosed with Feline Panleukopenia Virus and we had to rush them to the emergency animal hospital and leave them for intensive care. FPV is almost always fatal to kittens. He didn’t know that, but he knew something. As we waited for intake at the hospital, Stacy opened his carrying case and stuck her hand inside. He didn’t cower or hiss or slap her away. For the first time in his life, he came to her of his own volition. He pressed his head into the palm of her hand and stayed there.

The hospital let us bring the Bobbis home earlier than anticipated because Dobby wouldn’t eat. He’d even escaped at one point and been found in a drawer. “Sometimes cats live when they have someone to live for,” the doctor told us.

Dobby still wouldn’t eat when we got him home — until I picked him up and pressed him against my chest, so tight I could feel my heart beating through him, and held out a palm full of food. He wolfed it down. I crunched up pills and put them in his food. I pinned him down and forced syringes of medicines down his throat. He sat in my lap on purpose. He bopped me on my head with his head. He rolled over and showed me his belly. He lived, they all lived.

He kept pacing around in circles.

Perfectionism is the reason I’m so hard on myself about everything, including meditation. It’s textbook: low self-esteem caused, in large part, by childhood abuse that was extinguished when I accomplished something publicly noteworthy. My successes stopped the bad things happening to me and resulted in excessive praise.

“Am I always going to be this stupid kid?” I asked my therapist not too long ago, when I’d dug up another toxic cycle I was perpetuating in my daily life because of my perfectionism.

She said, “You’re a very successful 40-year-old woman. But yes, in some ways, you’ll always be this kid.”

Dobby’s anxiety routine goes like this: I wake up early and feed the other cats; then, I bring Dobby downstairs and give him a food bowl of his own. He starts to eat and the radiator clangs and he runs away. “Come back, sweet boy,” I coo, and he does. He eats. A garbage truck drives by and he runs away. “It’s okay, my angel,” I say. “Come back.” And he does. The house makes a settling sound, our upstairs neighbor drops her phone, rain slaps against the window, I shift and the floor creaks. He runs away. “Hey, baby bear,” I say. “It’s going to be okay.” He comes back. If it’s thundering or the street sweeper is out or he just can’t relax, I put my hand tenderly on his back; he wraps his tail around my wrist; he eats.

This is how we do lunch. It’s how we do dinner. Twice a day, I put the other cats away and brush him and scritch his chin and he curls up in my lap. He kisses me on one cheek. He kisses me on the other. He purrs as loud as a lion, trills with delight when I rub his ears between my thumb and forefinger. He presses his forehead against my forehead.

I have never begrudged Dobby’s anxiety or the extra time and care it requires. He’s almost four years old now. He’ll always be a kitten, too, just a little, just like me.

One of the wildest things about meditation is it rewires your brain, literally. Neuroscientists now understand that meditation doesn’t just help people out psychologically — it increases cortical thickness (which helps you regulate emotions, plan, and problem solve); it decreases the size of the amygdala (which is where your fight-or-flight operations exist); it shrinks the connections between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex (which decreases reactivity); and so much more. It’s called neuroplasticity; it’s the brain’s neurons rearranging themselves.

And get this: The parts of your brain that regulate resilience are enhanced by a very specific part of meditation. Not the part where you settle into the space around you. Not the part where you scan down your body to build up a picture of your mood. Not even the part where you focus for twenty minutes on your breath. No, the neurons that fire together and therefore wire together to make you tougher and stronger and more able to bounce back from setbacks are the neurons you stimulate when you gently return to your breath. Your mind actually has to wander off for them to learn to work.

I meditate in the mornings. I used to do it first thing, but now I do it after I tend to Dobby’s anxiety.

Lately I’ve been doing a visualization meditation. I imagine a kind of liquid sun filling up my body, from the tips of each of my individual toes, up into my feet, my ankles, my shins, my thighs, my hips, my stomach and chest and shoulders and down into my arms and fingertips, up up up into my neck and face to the tip-top of my head. I rest my mind in the warmth, the space, the light.

When my mind wanders, like it always does, I hold out my hand like I do for Dobby. Come back, baby bear. It’s okay. 

A few days ago, when my mind was basking in that calm space my body made for it, I had a vision of myself as a child. A very small child. Maybe three. Someone was holding me and I was laughing and I was free. I felt the joy of my child self in my adult body. My chest filled up with expanding, undiluted, unfiltered happiness. I was breathing so deeply and fully my muscles felt more relaxed than I could ever remember them being. In my living room in my house in New York City, my adult self started to cry, but in what was very clearly my great-grandmother’s backyard in Conyers, Georgia, my child self kept smiling, safe and content in the arms of the grown-up holding her close.

My vision zoomed out. I heard myself laugh. I felt it rumble in my chest like spring.

The person holding me was me.

Lesbian and Bisexual Women of History Who Were Obsessed With Their Dogs, Part 3

Last time on Lesbian and Bisexual Women Who Were Obsessed with Their Dogs, we learned how to get the girl and break up with the girl via the medium of dog metaphors, how to make your pooch a muse to the art world, and how to ensure you never forget what your dogs are called by simply giving them all the same name.

If you were worried that you’d run out of historical dog anecdotes with which to wow your family, friends and Tinder dates, fear not — here’s another round-up!

Elsie de Wolfe and Elisabeth Marbury

If you’ve ever glanced in passing at recorded lesbian history at the turn of the 20th century, you’d be forgiven for thinking life largely entailed hauling your entitled Anglo heiress arse on a grand tour of Europe, getting embroiled in some kind of drama in a Parisian salon, and then retiring to a country pad to produce several volumes of straight-washed memoirs about it all. While this may overshadow the many hidden, diverse stories that were undoubtedly unfolding at the time, the lifestyles of the rich and famous are a genuine part of our queer history, so let’s make like a giant crab and firmly embrace the queen of lesbian frivolity: Elsie de Wolfe.

Elsie de Wolfe was born in mid-19th century New York City, to a family oozing with Old World ancestry and privilege, but not the fortune to match. Despite her introduction into both New York and European high society as a teen, the death of Elsie’s father in the 1880s forced her to (gasp!) get a job, and she took to the New York stage (I promise this isn’t the plot of a Disney movie).

Elsie’s acting was objectively not great, but she had a finely-tuned skill for looking great. Adoring fans would travel from far and wide to see her fabulous stage outfits, and her stylishness secured her position among the social elite while she rebuilt her wealth. In 1887, Elsie met Elisabeth Marbury, another rich New York socialite who was doing various behind-the-scenes gigs on the theatre scene. Elsie and Elisabeth began a relationship, and Elisabeth’s career lit up as she blazed a trail to become the first female theatre manager and literary agent.

In 1892, Elsie moved in with Elisabeth, and later that year, the couple moved to a brownstone on Irving Place, forming what many historians call a “Boston Marriage” and which I call “marriage, but without all that showy straight stuff.” Elsie declared she would “devote all my leisure to making over this tiny old dwelling into a home which would fit into our plan for life” which is definitely the kind of thing gal pal roommates say to each other. Their friends called them “The Bachelors.”

Elsie and Elisabeth and a few of their puppers.

Elsie’s plan for life would not be complete without provision for her succession of dogs. Elisabeth came from a champion-breeding background; as a child she bred chickens competitively and she claimed Theodore Roosevelt encouraged her to breed English mastiffs. However, it was a pair of prize-winning French bulldogs that lived with the couple at Irving Place: Faustina and Fauvette. The latter appeared in his own interview to promote one of Elsie’s plays, and was alleged to sleep on silk rugs and have his own manicure kit.

Spurred on by a mixture of low self-esteem and the dinginess of her upbringing, Elsie sought to surround herself with luxury: “If I am ugly, and I am, I am going to make everything around me beautiful. That will be my life.” Encouraged by Elisabeth, Elsie quit the stage to become one of the world’s first and foremost interior designers, single-handedly popularising the profession, thanks to her many cultivated connections and a lot of hard work.

Her first paid interiors commission was for The Colony Club, the US’s first private club for women. Like you, I immediately thought this was code for “lesbian club” but somehow it wasn’t. The job was a success, and led to more work with the upper echelons of American society and a boat load of cash. This enabled Elsie to travel frequently to her beloved France, home to all things fashionable, and also lesbians. Of course the couple hung out with the usual suspects in Paris, but preferred living in the countryside, in a house in Versailles owned by über-lesbian Natalie Barney’s friend Lady Anglesey. Thus, for a time, the discerning queer visitor to Paris could spend Friday afternoon at Natalie Barney’s salon, Saturday night at Gertrude Stein’s studio and Sunday lunch at Elsie and Best’s country pad.

In 1905, the couple bought their own residence, the Villa Trianon in Versailles, with a bit of help from heiress and philanthropist Anne Morgan in what may have been a ménage a trois situation. The villa had been vacated by French pseudo-royalty and left to fade, giving Elsie the opportunity to gut the place and refurnish it with her own take on opulence.

Elsie and Elisabeth took their dogs with them to France and Faustina was succeeded by another French bulldog, Riquette. Perhaps inspired by her love of Chinoiserie, Elsie’s favours soon turned to a new breed: the Pekingese. In her defining interiors guide, The House in Good Taste, she describes how her little dog Wee Toi has his own house converted from a Chinese lacquer box, with a canopy and gold bells. She considered that provision for “little people” (dogs and cats) deserved as much frippery as big people. When the First World War broke out, Elsie was in France, but managed to flee to Spain, with her two Pekingese dogs in tow.

In 1926, in her sixties, Elsie surprised everyone (including Elisabeth) by getting married to a man, the English diplomat Sir Charles Mendl. Closer inspection reveals this to be a practical decision, as not only was the marriage 100% platonic, Elsie netted herself a title, tax-exempt status in France, and the means to throw even more lavish parties. She reconciled with Elisabeth, who by this time was having a “close friendship” with Elizabeth Arden, who naturally was also a dog owner and had an Alsation wolf hound named Don Caesar. Despite their fractured romance, Elsie and Elisabeth remained friends until Elisabeth’s death in 1933.

Although Elsie wound down her professional decorating practice as The Great Depression set into the US, this allowed her to devote more time and energy to becoming Europe’s foremost hostess. The pinnacle of her entertaining career were her “Circus Balls,” featuring hundreds of elite guests, acrobats, multiple orchestras, parading dogs and ponies, a Hawaiian guitarist, and endless champagne. The second of the two balls was held only two months before the outbreak of World War Two. Villa Trianon did not fare well during the war, and when she returned in 1946, it required complete renovation. One thing that remained, until the house was sold and gutted in the 1980s, was a fantastic ceiling mural depicting Elsie leaping from America to Europe, with her two Pekingese floating alongside her.

In her later years, Elsie moved on to another breed, the poodle. Elsie pioneered the blue-rinse hair style, and not content to limit this fashion invention to humans, also dyed the coat of her favourite poodle Blu Blu a matching shade. As arthritis and other ill-health set in, she was still to be found determinedly partying in a wheelchair by the pool at Villa Trianon, surrounded by dogs, until her death in 1950. Elsie was buried in the famous Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, but all her dogs she buried at Villa Trianon with the same gravestone inscription: “To the one I loved best.”

Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt was a great woman who had bad dogs. When her husband, Franklin D Roosevelt, was elected president in 1933, it was Eleanor who took their dogs on the six-hour drive to The White House. The pooches in question were their Alsatian, Major, and a Scottish terrier named Meggie. As an ex-police dog, it’s perhaps understandable that Major was a tad on the aggressive side. He would routinely get into fights while accompanying Eleanor on her horseback rides, or while taking his sons Colonel and Captain on parades around the Roosevelt’s New York home at Hyde Park. While at the White house, he would chase the maids, bite senators (including first elected woman senator Hattie Caraway), attorneys and visitors attempting to pet him through the garden rails, and in one diplomatic incident, nearly ripped the crotch of the British Prime Minister’s trousers.

About the only creature Major didn’t put up a fight with was Meggie, who was more than a match for the bigger dog. Meggie was very much Eleanor’s dog; the First Lady doted on her and refused to let anyone discipline the dog, leading to expected consequences. Meggie was given free run of the White House living quarters, despite her dislike for baths and penchant for terrorising the staff. When reporter Bess Furman interviewed Eleanor, she asked the ominous question “Meggie, have you been a naughty dog?” to which she received a prompt reply of a bite on the lip.

She was not the only reporter to have encounters with the dogs. In 1928, when FDR was governor of New York state, Eleanor was interviewed at home by a female reporter at the top of her profession, Lorena “Hick” Hickok. They discussed dogs at length, politics a little and drank a lot of tea, in case you were wondering whether this was a lesbian first date or not. Eleanor’s daughter Anna had a police dog called Chief, who was very similar to Hick’s own dog Prinz, while Eleanor herself elegantly served the tea with her beloved Meggie curled around her feet.

Eleanor and Hick and Pups

Eleanor and Hick wouldn’t spend time together again until FDR’s run for the top job in 1932, when Hick was assigned to his campaign trail. As they travelled across the many states, Hick’s writing focused less and less on the candidate, and more and more on his wife, until Hick asked to be assigned to write about Eleanor, despite her usual reservations about “women’s page stuff.” The pair become close, the kind of close that produced 18 boxes of steamy love letters over the next 30 years. Lest this sound too idyllic, Hick didn’t escape Major’s animosity, receiving a signature bite on the elbow one time, when she tried “helping Eleanor with a zipper“ [emphasis mine, purely for innuendo purposes].

Neither Major nor Meggie could last long as presidential puppets with such bad temperaments, and they were banished from the White House before FDR’s first year was up. Their first attempt at a replacement was in December 1933, with a purebred English Setter called Winks. After a couple of months settling in, he distinguished himself by breaking into a room prepared for a breakfast meeting and and guzzling 18 platefuls of bacon and eggs before getting caught. However, his downfall was not his incredible appetite, but a bite from another dog through the iron bars surrounding the White House.

In April 1933, the Roosevelts were gifted a giant Old English Sheepdog called Tiny, who, like his predecessors lasted only a few months with the family before being given away, although details are scarce about what specific crime merited this.

A long dogless period followed at the White House, until 1940 when the Roosevelts finally found a dog that wasn’t a complete menace, and was catapulted to stardom because of it: Fala. FDR gave him the full title of “Murray the Outlaw of Falahill,” after a Scottish clan chief, and for the five years they spent together until FDR’s death in 1945, Fala was very much considered the president’s dog. Fala featured in a famous speech where FDR repudiated Republican suggestions that he’d sent millions of dollars sending a warship to rescue the stranded pup when he got left behind on an island (which honestly doesn’t sound like the worst use of funds), and even starred in his own film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OlZVXoDWdM

Despite the strong bond between FDR and Fala (the only pupper to feature in a presidential memorial statue), it was Eleanor that cared for him the longest, taking him with her back to New York after FDR’s death. To make sure Fala wasn’t lonely, Eleanor acquired his grandson, Tamas McFala. After a suitable period of feigned indifference to the puppy’s arrival, Fala took to his kin and the two Scotties would frequently run off to Eleanor’s chagrin. Eventually, Tamas was joined by a further Scottie, Mr Duffy, gifted by a friend after Fala’s death in 1952. The dogs’ hijinks, and various pieces of dog-related advice, are chronicled extensively in Eleanor’s “My Day” newspaper columns that she wrote for 27 years, after initial urging from Hick. Hick herself lost her beloved Prinz in 1943, and it was Eleanor who gifted her a new dog, an English setter named Mr. Choate.

It is surely very comforting to have one friend on whom you can rely, who will never question your moods, nor your actions, but will simply look at you adoringly and lick your hand whenever you give him a chance
– Eleanor Roosevelt

Naomi “Micky” Jacob

The multi-talented Naomi “Micky” Jacob was born in North Yorkshire in England in 1884. Both her parents were teachers, and although they were financially comfortable, her Father’s violent temperament and womanising split the family apart. After several moves around England, Naomi’s mum and younger sister moved to America, while the strident Naomi decided that, aged fourteen, she would become a teacher herself, and moved to a school in a Middlesborough slum to fulfil her ambitions. All she got out of her dream career was frequent tellings-off from the headmistress and a dose of tuberculosis that would afflict her health all her life. After a couple of years, Naomi was lured onto the stage and into the bed of actress and singer Marguerite Broadfoote, who gave Naomi the pet name, “Micky,” as she was henceforth known among friends and lovers for the rest of her life.

Her Yorkshire childhood imbued Micky with a great love of animals, and her family kept, at various times, cats, guinea pigs, goats, ferrets, and an owl. The family’s first dog was named Tip, who had a painful run-in with a bowl of soup; her mother had a fawn-coloured pug named Fi-Fi, her sister a Scottie called Sprig Mead, and she passed many enjoyable hours with her grandad and his spaniel Dash, while she listened to his tales of her father’s Jewish family, who had fled Poland during a Russian pogrom.

Micky travelled with Marguerite as her lover, adviser and secretary during their seven year relationship until finally in 1914, Marguerite’s husband had enough and kicked Micky out. Micky was barred from seeing her for several months, but was able to make contact again when Marguerite became seriously ill, eventually dying in 1915. It seems likely that Marguerite was the love of Micky’s life, and although she had numerous entanglements with many women, she never settled down with (just) one for as long a period. She turned down multiple marriage proposals from men, but did have a very brief failed marriage, although she claims in her memoirs to have entirely forgotten who she got married to.

There was little that Micky did by half measure; after becoming enamoured with Christobel Pankhurst during a suffragette rally in Middlesborough, she immediately asked if she could start smashing windows and martyr herself in jail. Her request was denied on the basis that she had a tendency to make a joke of everything, and she was resigned only to take part in marches and sell copies of suffrage newspapers. Micky would claim in later years that her sense of humour also thwarted her political ambitions to stand as a Labour MP, because no-one expected politicians to make jokes.

At the outbreak of the first world war, Micky immediately signed up to the Women’s Emergency Corp. Despite her own admission that her only skills were riding and boxing, she was given numerous roles to aid the war effort to varying degrees, including managing a toy factory, running charity campaigns for impoverished Russian children, visiting the trenches in France and supervising a canteen at a munitions factory. She met a new partner, housekeeper and barmaid Carlotta Francesca Maria Simione – known as Simmy – and they moved in together in north London. She was only dragged away from her war work by the worsening of her TB, and was prescribed a trip to a sanatorium for eight months.

Micky and Best Friends

After the war, Micky returned to her theatrical roots, this time as an actress. Her health continued to deteriorate, limiting her stage ambitions but pushing her towards the writing career that would come to define her later years. Micky published the first of her fifty novels in 1926, typically focusing on multi-generational sagas. Unusually for the period, she mostly wrote about Jewish families and their plight across Europe, with a sympathy rarely found in a time of rampant anti-semitism. When her 1935 novel Honour Came Back won in international literary prize, she was quick to refuse it when she discovered the other honouree was Hitler’s Mein Kampf. As well as fiction, in 1933 she published the first of nine volumes of autobiography, all despite her own confession that she wrote poorly and had no idea what to do with a semi-colon. Although wildly popular at the time, her books are largely forgotten and out-of-print today.

During another stint at an exclusive sanatarium she met Olivia Etherington Smith, who supplanted Simmy in Micky’s affections, although the two would remain lifelong friends. Micky and Olivia moved to the Italian town of Sirmione on the shores of Lake Garda for long-term convalescence, and Micky would remain in Italy for the rest of her life, aside from a lengthy escape for the Second World War and intermittent trips back to Britain. On one such trip back for another stay in the sanatorium, she embarked on an affair with Sadie Robinson, whom she took back to Italy to form a ménage a trois with the not entirely impressed Olivia. Micky was always very discreet about her relationships in her memoirs, so it’s hard to determine if “sanatorium” was a coded reference to some kind of lesbian hang out, or if in the 1920s having TB was genuinely a great way to pick up girls.

Micky loved her Italian lifestyle (although she did demand all her cooks learnt how to make Yorkshire puddings), christening her house “Casa Mickie,” where she would receive all manner of literary and stage personalities that she had befriended over the years. She and Olivia met Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge after a talk by Radclyffe in 1929, and bonded over their shared interests of sexual inversion, Catholicism and pets. The couple came and visited Micky in Italy in 1934, then again in 1935 with Hall’s mistress Evguenia Souline, which ended up with Micky kicking them out for anti-semitic remarks (they made up later, largely because Micky had the hots for Una).

After the war, Micky formed a new threesome with her secretary Denise “Martino” Martin and Sara Turner, continued writing, and appearing on BBC Radio programmes such as Women’s Hour. She died two weeks after her eightieth birthday in July 1964.

Of course, it’s a statistical impossibility that someone could write 50+ books and not have either a memoir dedicated to dogs, or some kind of book written from a dog’s point of view. Ever prolific, Naomi Jacob wrote both! Her 1949 autobiography Me and Mine is devoted entirely to the history of all the animals she both kept and had encountered throughout her life, and the 1955 book Prince China: By Himself But Dictated to Naomi Jacob is part memoir, part meditation on the wonders of the Pekingese breed she adored, and another exercise in trying to identify who a long-dead lesbian might have slept with based on the fictionalised viewpoint of her dogs.

If most of Eleanor Roosevelt’s dogs had a tendency for bad behaviour, then most of Micky Jacob’s dogs were utterly cursed with bad luck. Here’s a brief summary of her many pooches and their ultimate downfall:

+  Roger, a black collie/retriever mix, Micky’s first dog that was entirely hers. Enjoyed killing cats until he caught mange from one of his victims, leaving him much cowed. Left with friends in Middlesborough when Micky moved to London; contracted fatal diabetes.

+  Bogie, a steel grey terrier. Enjoyed eating turnips and ice cream with Roger. Died of pneumonia.

+  Tiny, long-haired silver terrier, expert mouse-killer, friend to a cat and two canaries. Dognapped outside a shop.

+  Donnie, rescued stray. Euthanised after bouts of depression and asthma attacks following Marguerite’s death.

+ Tich, a terrier adopted from Battersea Dogs’ Home for the sum of ten shillings and sixpence. After two days caught the shivers and died of distemper

+ Bogie II, a terrier mix bought at a market in Leicester, who preferred the greengrocer’s next door to Micky’s flat. Eventually moved there permanently for a lifetime supply of organic vegetables.

+ Ting-a-ling, a lovely and determined Pekingese. Fell victim, freshly bathed, to a hit-and-run on Baker Street.

+ Sammy, aka Samuel Nelson, aka Hi Ling Choo Fu, a Pekingese and Micky’s favourite. Gifted by a friend who had too many dogs to manage. Ate violet leaves daily to ease his indigestion. Died after a life of excellence aged eighteen. Grave desecrated by Nazis because of his Jewish name.

+ Nipper, a terrier. Bought by British servicemen in Milan who failed to realise a puppy is for life and not just for Christmas. Rescued by Micky and elevated to Miss Susan Nipper. After four months began suffering frequent fits and diagnosed with meningitis; put to sleep.

+ Tu-Tu, passed off as Peke by a dog-seller, but really some kind of mix. Of extremely robust health, but vanished after a car crash.

+ Baldo di Garda, known as “Mr. B,” Pekingese. Bought during the war to assuage the loss of Sammy and moved back to Italy with Micky. Suffered an unexplained paralysis, but treated with brandy and black coffee and learnt to walk again. Suffered badly from a skin disease that he bore with great fortitude. Lived for several more years before suffering a series of fainting fits and passing away with suspected heart failure. Gently lowered into the middle of Lake Garda at his funeral.

+ Enso, another Peke bought with Baldo, having an extremely angelic nature. Quickly succumbed to a mystery illness.

+ Mario, a stray fox terrier that wandered round the cafés on the shores of Lake Garda, adopted by Elsa, Micky’s secretary and assumed gal pal. Good swimmer, steadfast friend to Baldo. Notorious hen-chaser, vanished into the hills one day, possibly gunned down by an embittered ex-hen-owner.

Micky also kept many other animals throughout her life, including a legion of cats (one of whom was named Lesbia), and a rabbit called Yonnie. I mention these names purely for informational purposes.

The protagonists of Prince China were China himself, and his partner-in-crime Plate, who were sourced in Britain to send to Micky in Italy, and named after Cockney rhyming slang (China Plate = “me old mate”). Both were imperious Pekingeses, who in the book refer to Micky variously as their “Daddy” and “Protector” and Micky’s various friends/lovers as a hierarchy of personal slaves. Their fates are not recorded, so let us hope they outlived Micky to a ripe old age, gambolling around the Italian countryside.

Frida Kahlo

Iconic artist, feminist heroine, and eyebrow inspiration to the world, Frida Kahlo created a cultural and stylistic legacy that has only grown over time. But also: dogs!

Frida and doggos.

Kahlo’s work was shaped by her difficult early years, and the physical impact they would have on her body. A childhood bout of polio followed by a serious bus accident as a teen forced her to abandon her plans to become a doctor and concentrate on the painting that had proved therapeutic during her convalescence. Frida experimented with her look as a means to take control of her body, from androgynous suits, to decorating the supportive corsets she wore after the crash, to the traditional Tehuana dress that would come to define her look as she explored the indigenous parts of heritage.

From this heritage she also drew a number of references recurrent in her work, many from the natural world, including monkeys and dogs. Frida’s breed of choice was the Xoloitzcuintli, an ancient breed dating back over 3000 years, when it was revered (as well as sacrificed and eaten) by the Aztecs, as a manifestation of the god of death and guardian of the underworld, Xolotol. Xolo dogs play the same role in Frida’s symbolist paintings, which are littered with references to mortality. As well as her several close-calls with death, Frida suffered multiple miscarriages and was unable to carry a child to term — it’s not surprising that life and death figure so prominently.

In lieu of human children, Frida and her piece-of-shit husband Diego Rivera created their own family of pets. Not only the monkeys (named Fulang Chang and Caimito de Guayabal) and dogs that worked their way into Frida’s art, but also an Amazon parrot named Bonito, an eagle called Gertrudis Caca Blanca (literally Gertrude white shit), parakeets, macaws, hens, sparrows and even a little fawn. She expanded this further with the verdant garden she grew at her lifelong home, Casa Azul.

Itzcuintli Dog with Me and Self Portrait With Small Monkey

Frida’s Xolo dogs were named Señor Xolotl, Señorita Capulina and Señora Kostic. They were her long-time companions at Casa Azul and would sleep curled at the foot of her bed. They feature multiple times in her many sketchbooks and diaries, showing she took simple joy in them and wasn’t just in it for earnestly depicting them as harbingers of doom.

Mr. Xolotl
My great
companion
I love you

– Frida Kahlo

Her favourite of the trio was Senor Xolotl, who starred in several of her paintings, notably her 1949 masterpiece The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Myself, Diego and Señor Xolotl.

The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Myself, Diego and Señor Xolotl.

Unnamed Xolos also feature in Still Life For Samuel Fastlicht (a gift for her dentist), and several of her famous self-portraits, including Itzcuintli Dog with Me, Self Portrait with Itxcuintli Dog and Sun and Self Portrait With Small Monkey.

For someone that’s been written about so extensively, it’s astonishing that there is no documentation of how Frida’s dogs may have intertwined with her affairs with women, including actresses Dolores del Rio and Paulette Goddard, singer Chavela Vargas and possibly even Josephine Baker.

It’s True: Queer Women Own The Most Cats

Welcome to our very first post containing information drawn from the 2018 Autostraddle Lesbian Stereotypes Survey! Over 12,000 people completed the survey, and these are the demographics of the respondents:

We’re kicking off our analysis with a topic near and dear to the hearts of far too many of us: pet ownership. Specifically, is it true that “lesbians love cats”? My friends — it’s… mostly true. Despite 26% of Europeans and 12% of Americans being allergic to cats, including me, queer women and non-binary people continue obtaining, raising, and loving cats with absolute abandon, at relatively significant rates. Conversely, despite the general excellence exhibited by dogs throughout human history and the superiority embodied by my dog Carol specifically, queer women and non-binary people are not more likely to own dogs than your average everyday heterosexual Jo. (jk there are no heterosexual Jos).

Overall Pet Ownership

Before we get too deep into this important news, let us first declare that we are also a little bit more likely to own pets in general. 68.6% of U.S. residents on our survey said they own at least one pet, compared to 62% of all Americans (according to a 2015 Harris Poll that surveyed 2,205 U.S. adults), but it’s worth noting that our survey group skews young, which is not an inherent characteristic of a queer group, and young people are apparently more likely to own pets.

65% of millennials own pets, according to that same Harris Poll, whereas 66% of our 18-to-34 group does. They found 71% of Gen X-ers owning pets, compared to 76% of our 35-to-44-year-olds. So age did indeed give us an edge, but we’re still doing a lot of the heavy lifting ourselves. However, most of our lift takes place in the realm of… cats.

Your Animal Kingdom

There are only two types of pets we are more likely to own than straight people: cats and reptiles/amphibians.

Some other interesting comparisons:

• We’re Switching It Up On Crossover Ownership: On our survey, 30% of U.S. cat owners have dogs, and 37% of dog owners also have cats. On the Harris poll, 49% of cat owners have dogs and 34% of dog owners also have a cat.
• More Kids = More Pets: On the Harris poll, 73% of Americans with kids in their household had at least one pet, compared to 57% of those without. On ours, 79% of kid-households had at least one pet — and so do 67.6% of those without. So, childless queer folks are significantly more likely than childless straights to have pets. 
• In fact, a full 71% of survey-takers who don’t want to ever have kids have pets, because who needs babies when you have fur babies.
• People in relationships are more likely to have pets than those who aren’t — 48% have cats and 37% have dogs, compared to 37% of single people with cats and 31% with dogs. Once you get married, you commit to pets, too: 53% with cats, and 48% with dogs.
• Residents of rural areas were most likely to have pets (84%), followed by suburbanites (75%) and city-dwellers (64%).
• Only 26% of our city-dwellers have dogs, and 38% have cats; compared to 51% of those in rural areas with dogs and 57% with cats.
• The only cities where dog-owners outnumbered cat owners were all in warm climates: Los Angeles, Dallas/Ft.Worth, Atlanta, Phoenix, Miami, San Diego and Austin.

Yes, Cats?

This survey’s cat-ownership numbers were a little higher than what we’ve seen in prior surveys. Our 2016 Autostraddle Reader Survey showed 37% of all respondents and 40% of all U.S. residents admitting to cat ownership, but that number has crept forward over the last two years. This may be because a queer woman in possession of a cat is exactly the type of person who would want to take a survey about lesbian stereotypes, or perhaps everybody went out and bought a cat in 2017 because they needed something to hold onto while democracy dies.

Still, even those old numbers are at least slightly higher than overall numbers of cat ownership, regardless of which survey you compare ours to — and there are plenty to choose from!

Now, let’s venture into new lands.

Cats of the Commonwealth

We had enough survey-takers in the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada to look at their numbers, too. And the preference for cats over dogs gets even more dramatic outside of the U.S., as does our apparent indifference towards fish and birds:

Apparently in these three countries, the preference for dogs over cats amongst all humans is not quite as dramatic as it is in the U.S..

Autostraddle’s very high cats vs. dogs numbers in Canada specifically might be due to 76% of our Canadian survey-takers living in urban areas (compared to 62-63% of others), where it can be easier to own a cat than a dog. Four times as many Montreal residents, for example, own cats rather than dogs. On a related note, Montreal is a lovely city and also the coldest place I have ever been, and also there are apparently just a lot of cats in Canada.

But… why are queer women and non-binary people at least slightly more likely to own cats than the population-at-large? The obvious answer is: because women are more likely to own cats than men, and our group is mostly women. I mean, that’s what pop culture has told me. Hell, Shutterstock’s got 426 pictures of women with cats, but only 96 for men.

Well, my friends: it’s all a lie.

The Patriarchy Also Loves Cats

If you search “how many men own cats” you’ll get a lot of articles like “8 Reasons You Should Consider Dating A Guy Who Owns A Cat” and “Is it Usual for Straight Men to Own Cats?,” but despite this apparent cultural unease, men are living with cats like there’s no tomorrow.

In 2001, a Gallup poll declared “the stereotype of older women loving cats — and lots of them — is not supported by the Gallup results.” They found older men just as likely as older women to own cats, and “little difference” between these two genders for cat or dog ownership across age groups.

The 2016 gfK survey found 40% of men and 38% of women in the U.S. owning cats. Last year, multiple news outlets in the U.K. reported that more than two-thirds of cat owners are men. Mintel Research, in the U.S., also found that men were more likely than women to have a cat, with a whopping 46% of millennial men owning cats. In 2008, The New York Times wrote a trend piece about busy working men who found cats to be the perfect furry companion for their lifestyles, declaring the rise of “a growing number of single — and yes, heterosexual — men who seem to be coming out of the cat closet and unabashedly embracing their feline side.” In 2016, an Australian newspaper hailed “the rise of the cat man.” I missed all of these articles because I don’t care about men, but there’s so many more where those came from.

So, it’s not our gender that makes our group more likely to own cats than the population-at-large. I can only conclude that it is a worldwide conspiracy against me, but I am open to theories from cat-lovers in the comments.

Some Fun Stats Regarding Different Types of Pet Owners

This survey got a ton of responses and is teeming with bizarre information, which makes it a virtual playground for irrelevant data collection. I set SurveyMonkey to compare all different types of pet owners, and then went on a terrific jaunt through the rest of the survey to see what their algorithm declared statistically significant.

Before I give you this information, let me be clear: when I say “cat owners are more likely than dog owners to be vegan.” I don’t mean that most cat owners are vegan! I just mean that the number of cat owners identifying as vegans was declared significantly higher than the number of dog owners identifying as vegans.

So, here we go:

Cat owners are more likely than dog owners to be vegan (6%), identify as hard femme (7.5%), be trans (which includes non-binary people) (28%), be queer-identified (29.5%), have an undercut (20%), not remove any body hair (11%), have long nails (8.6%), use menstrual cups (29%), have complete confidence in their sewing abilities (48%), read their horoscopes regularly (23.4%), be an unaffiliated atheist (25%), do at least some witchcraft (23%), have gone to a women’s college (7%) and to prefer non-monogamy (22.4%). Cat owners are more likely than dog owners to live in the city.

Dog owners are more likely than cat owners to be tomboys (21%), be married (24%), have children (12%), identify as lesbians (45%), prefer monogamy (68%), shave their legs (68%), have complete confidence in their stick-shift driving abilities (27%), be Catholic (3.6%), be a Pisces (9%), be sports fans (35%), play sports (the only sport where cat-owners outnumber dog-owners is roller derby), have been hunting or fishing within the past year (12%) and been camping overnight within the past year (42%). Dog owners are more likely than cat owners to live in the country.

Other interesting situations include that small mammal owners are the most likely to be vegan or vegetarian and reptile/amphibian owners are the most likely to have ever seen a ghost. Like… by far. 39% of reptile/amphibian owners have seen or been in the presence of a ghost — all other pet owners are at around 28%-30%, and non-pet-owners are at 18.5%. I can therefore safely conclude, with the authority vested in me by the fact that it’s too late at night for another editor to edit this post before it’s published in the morning, that ghosts are attracted to reptiles and amphibians as well as animals in general. If you’d like to see a ghost, you should probably buy a lizard.

Unsurprisingly, those who own horses and other farm animals are the handiest around the house by far, as well as the most environmentally conscious and the most likely to be former vegans and vegetarians.

In Conclusion

There are a lot of weird narratives around cat ownership for straight people, like the aforementioned concern that only gay men own cats. Then there’s the “crazy cat-lady stereotype,” most strongly associated with not just unmarried women, but undesirable unmarried women, which has thrived for some time. In “The Crazy History of the Cat Lady,” Linda Rodriguez notes that after centuries of cat ownership being associated with witches and widows, followed by several decades of terrifying media depictions on shows like Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons, “Cat ownership by an unmarried woman had come to signify a kind of mutual capitulation of that woman to a society that wouldn’t or couldn’t marry her.” Rodriguez believes that the stereotype is changing, however, thanks to Taylor Swift having a cat, the evolution of the role of marriage in society, increased visibility of actual cat owners on the internet, and a cultural shift initiated by marketers to embrace pet owners with outsize affection for their furry friends. I’ve got another theory to add to that stack, though. Maybe — just maybe — it’s got something to do with us.

I honestly expected the numbers to be even more dramatic than they are — but maybe that’s because the real difference isn’t that we own oodles more cats than everybody else, it’s that we talk about cats a lot more than everybody else.

So many lesbian stereotypes come down to one thing: a perception of lesbians as unashamed to be enthusiastic about things straight women are supposed to avoid or, at the very least, stay quiet about. For example: being fat, sporting body hair, dressing for comfort over style, foregoing makeup. “Being obsessed with our cats” would fit neatly onto that list, I think.

Proud cat ownership, much to my personal despair as somebody who is allergic to the furniture in the homes of 40% of my potential dating pool, is just another example of us setting trends and being way ahead of the curve.

In conclusion, my dog Carol is really great!!!!

Stereotype: LGBTQ+ Women & Non-Binary People Love Cats
Verdict:  True

Lesbian and Bisexual Women of History Who Were Obsessed With Their Dogs, Part 2

Last time on Lesbian and Bisexual Women Who Were Obsessed with Their Dogs, we learned many lessons from our queer ancestors about how best to incorporate your canine companions in to your lifestyle. There was a big yes to fashion photoshoots, European travel and fleeing the patriarchy; a big no to stage plays, and a big WTF to worshipping your dog as the reincarnation of Christ. Also if you haven’t written your dog’s-eye-view novel yet, you need to get on that right away.

I’m sure at least one reader has been panting with anticipation about what further revelations lurk in our woefully unexplored queer pupper past. Find out literally right now, as we continue our historical adventures with gal’s best pal!

Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson, America’s favourite depressive poet, came from a wealthy, well-educated family in 19th century Amherst, Massachusetts. Despite her strong intellect and probably because of the mental illnesses that would bring her great suffering throughout her life, Emily only made it partway through her schooling at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary and returned home to teenage years of increasing isolation.

Perhaps observant of her lack of companionship, Emily’s dad Edward gave her a brown Newfoundland puppy in 1849. Emily named him Carlo, after a dog in Jane Eyre, and he quickly grew to about three times the size of the diminutive young poet, a sight that amused visitors. Dickinson’s first ever published work in the Amherst College paper in 1850 also contains her first written reference to Carlo, as part of a lengthy and accomplished metaphor from which I have conveniently extracted just the dog parts:

“If it was my Carlo now! The Dog is the noblest work of Art, sir. I may safely say the noblest — his mistress’s rights he doth defend — although it bring him to his end — although to death it doth him send!”

Sadly, no pictures of Carlo exist, but here is an artist’s impression of a Newfoundland from 1858

It was around this time that Emily forged another close bond, with Susan Gilbert, a student her own age who shared a lot of her interests, including despair about their lot in life as housewives-to-be and the dislike of household chores (although Emily was actually a champion baker). Susan’s erudition and passion for literature would inspire over 300 letters from Emily over the course of her life, far more than to any other correspondent, and included many of Emily’s most famous poems. Of course, scholars argue over whether the nature of their attachment progressed from friendship to romantic friendship, or even something more, but we can all use our rational gay judgement to reach the correct conclusion. Whatever their relationship, it didn’t stop Susan going on to marry Emily’s elder brother, Austen.

“Oh Susie, I often think that I will try to tell you how very dear you are, and how I’m watching for you, but the words wont come, tho’ the tears will, and I sit down disappointed — yet darling, you know it all — then why do I seek to tell you? I do not know; in thinking of those I love, my reason is all gone from me, and I do fear sometimes that I must make a hospital for the hopelessly insane, and chain me up there such times, so I wont injure you” – Emily Dickinson, defining “chill” in 1852

Her breast is fit for pearls,
But I was not a “Diver” –
Her brow is fit for thrones
But I have not a crest.
Her heart is fit for home
I – a Sparrow – build there
Sweet of twigs and twine
My perennial nest.
—Totally casual poem Emily wrote in a letter to Susan, 1859

In her late twenties, Emily famously began a long period of reclusion, but in truth she wasn’t completely alone, she was eschewing the company of humans for wild nights in with Carlo. Although Susan was the audience for much of her literary output, the only creature that she shared all her work with was her beloved Carlo, whose patient nature could withstand her darkest of spells.

“Of ‘shunning Men and Women’ … He and I don’t object to them, if they’ll exist their side” – Emily Dickinson on her and Carlo’s understandable view of other people

“You ask of my companions. Hills, sir, and the sundown, and a dog as large as myself that my father bought me. They are better than human beings, because they know but do not tell.”

The only photo of Emily Dickinson ever.

Emily broke out of her depression for a period of prolific creativity in the early 1860s, producing almost 700 hundred poems between 1862-1864. During this intensity, Carlo was a steadfast companion, providing some balance for the manic Emily.

“I talk of all these things with Carlo, and his eyes grow meaning, and his shaggy feet keep a slower pace.”

Worsening health problems put the brakes on her literary output, and worst of all, Carlo died in 1866. Emily never got over the loss of her “Shaggy Ally,” and couldn’t bring herself to replace him. Without her protector and barrier to the outside world, her reclusiveness increased. She continued to write, but she never matched the volume of correspondence and poetry as those years with Carlo, and eventually succumbed to a long illness in 1886. At least she had this thought to comfort her: “I believe that the first to come and greet me when I go to heaven will be this dear, faithful, old friend Carlo?”

Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West

The protagonists of one of history’s most compelling lesbian love affairs, Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West were both accomplished writers: Virginia, now famed for her experimental novels, while Vita’s work encompassed poetry, travel writing and journalism as well as novels. But most importantly, they both wrote about dogs.

Virginia’s family, although middle-class and financially comfortable, was highly chaotic and led to a childhood punctuated with loss (her mother died when Virginia was 13) and sexual abuse (by her stepbrother Gerald). Dogs would act both as a stabiliser during these manic years, and a bridge between Virginia and her sister Vanessa, who was generally considered the “dog person” among the siblings. Among their childhood dogs were Shag, an overly-docile terrier picked up on holiday in Cornwall who failed miserably at his rat-catching duties, and Jerry who would make continual bids for freedom from their home in London’s Hyde Park.

As a teenager, Virginia developed a crush on one of her mother’s friends, Violet Dickinson, and got her first practice at one of her least-reported, yet most frequently-used literary devices: expressing your repressed sexual attraction for girls by conflating them with dog feelings. Here she is, in a totes platonic letter, imagining herself as Violet’s Chow, Robert:

“I think with Joy of certain exquisite moments when Rupert and I lick your forehead with a red-tongue and a purple tongue; and twine your hairs round our noses.”

One of Virginia’s strongest canine attachments was with her sister’s sheepdog Gurth, who she would walk around Regent’s Park, giving her comfort during her times of breakdown, as well as providing inspiration for works to come. Although she would occasionally grow weary with Gurth’s constant vigilance of her, she grew such a high regard for him that often the best compliment she could give a human was to compare them to a sheepdog.

To supplement Gurth’s visits, Virginia and her brother Adrian got another dog of their own, a boxer named Hans, who she taught the very important trick of putting out matches she’d use to light cigarettes (a trick she’d teach all her future dogs too).

In August 1910, Virginia married Leonard Woolf, a friend of her brother Thoby’s. Virginia and Leonard did not have sex, but very quickly they did have dogs: the first called Max, then a Climber Spaniel called Tinker, who they adopted from a friend for a month, most of which Virginia spent carefully observing him. As noted by her nephew and biographer Quentin Bell “Her affection was odd and remote. She wanted to know what her dog was feeling but then she wanted to know what everyone was feeling, and perhaps dogs were no more inscrutable than most humans.” In 1919, the couple acquired a new terrier, Grizzle, who became an integral part of their life in Sussex, going on long rambles through the countryside with Virginia, while she and Leonard set up their print business, Hogarth Press.

This idyllic lifestyle was rocked by a gay interruption in the 1920s, when Virginia began her decade-long affair with Vita Sackville-West. Vita, born in 1892 to an aristocratic family in Kent, was confident and well-travelled; almost the polar opposite of Virginia, whose mental illnesses often kept her both socially and geographically confined. In her estate in Kent, Vita would corral her troops of Elkhounds, and kept multitudes of different breeds throughout her life.

The couple wrote copious letters to each other throughout their affair, and from the start they adopted Virginia’s practiced habit of canine allegory. This started simply enough, Virginia describing their first romantic encounter as so:

“The explosion which happened on the sofa in my room here when you behaved so disgracefully and acquitted me forever. Acquired me, that’s what you did, like buying a puppy in a shop and leading it away on a string.”

Then Virginia would liken herself to her own dog Grizzle, as a counterpoint to Vita’s thoroughbreds, and play the old “I really want to lick you – sorry – my dog really wants to lick you” card:

“Remember your dog Grizzle and your Virginia, waiting for you; both rather mangy; but what of that? These shabby mongrels are always the most loving, warmhearted creatures. Grizzle and Virginia will rush down to meet you—they will lick you all over”

Before long though, they advanced to creating an imaginary pooch named Potto who, at various times would stand in for either Virginia or Vita, or indeed as a metaphor for their whole relationship. Virginia, per ushe:

“Potto kisses you and says he could rub your back and cure it by licking it.”

Lamenting a separation, Vita writes:

“This letter is principally to say that Potto is not very happy; he mopes; and I am not sure he has not got the mange; so he will probably insist on being brought back to Mrs. Woof [sic].”

Whether this a way to obscure the nature of their relationship in a time when it was not at all acceptable, they were purposefully trying to find the most lesbian way to process their feelings, or they were just genuinely really shit at saying directly how they felt about each other is a mystery that remains to this day.

“Beauty shines on two dogs doing what two women must not do” – Virginia Woolf, wistfully, after watching her dog have sex in the park

Although Leonard and Virginia seemed happy enough with a sexless marriage, of course the affair stirred up trouble. In a total power move, Vita gifted the couple a black Cocker spaniel, named Pinka, from a litter birthed by her own purebred, Pippin. Both Leonard and Grizzle were jealous of the new arrival, but poor Grizzle was not to endure too much of it, and died in 1926. Virginia promoted Pinka to her chief canine companion, which of course meant lots of dubious mentions in her correspondence with Vita:

“Please Vita dead don’t forget your humble creatures – Pinker and Virginia. Here we are sitting by the gas fire alone. Every morning she jumps on my bed and kisses me, and I say that’s Vita.”

Virginia famously wrote Orlando as a pseudo-biography of Vita, and the dogs referenced in the book are based on Vita’s real-life canine companions. These include Pippin, as well as her chief elkhound Canute, and a Saluki called Zurcha that she acquired in Iraq and wasn’t super-impressed with:

“without exception the dullest dog I ever owned … nothing would induce her to come out for a walk – perhaps because I omitted to provide a gazelle. In the end I followed the historical tradition and gave her to a Persian Prince, who subsequently lost her somewhere in Moscow.”

Vita and Virginia with dogs

Virginia’s foremost foray into canine literature though, was Flush: A Biography. On the surface, a parody biography of the dognapped pet of Elizabeth and Robert Barrett-Browning, told from his own perspective, it also incorporates much from Virginia’s own life, including allusions to her childhood abuse and explorations of the human-canine bond, and draws from the many years spent walking her own dogs round the streets of London.

By the late 1920s, Virginia and Vita’s affair was on the rocks. Everyone processes breakups in their own way, and there’s a lot of good advice out there, but really is there any better method than comparing your failed relationship to the long and painful death of your imaginary dog?

“Potto is dead. For about a month (you have not been for a month and I date his decline from your last visit) I have watched him failing. First his coat lost lustre; then he refused biscuits; finally gravy. When I asked him what ailed him he sighed, but made no answer. The other day coming unexpectedly into the room, I found him wiping away a tear. He still maintained unbroken silence. Last night it was clear that the end was coming. I sat with him holding his paw in mine and felt the pulse grow feebler. At 7:45 he breathed deeply. I leant over him. I just caught and was able to distinguish the following words—“Tell Mrs. Nick that I love her….She has forgotten me. But I forgive her and…(here he could hardly speak) die…of…a…broken…heart!” He then expired….Oh my God—my Potto.”

Virginia and Vita remained on good terms after their romantic relationship ended, right up until Virginia’s suicide in 1941. Vita continued her writing, and become a celebrated gardener at her estate in Sissinghurst, where she created a small dog cemetery to commemorate several of her canine comrades, including Martha, Dan and her favourite Alsatian, Rollo. She drew together her love of dogs and travelling in her 1961 book Faces: Profiles of Dogs which combined photos of her favourite breeds with amateur history and her own anecdotes.

“Half the horrors of illness cease when one has a book or a dog or a cup of one’s own at hand.”

Mary Woolley and Jeanette Marks

Mary Woolley and Jeanette Marks were lifelong companions and educators who spent most of their lives fulfilling as many lesbian stereotypes as possible before the popularisation of plaid.

Mary and Jeanette with dog

Mary was born in Connecticut in 1863, and after great success as a student, began teaching at the all-female Wellesley College in 1895. That same year, the young Jeanette Marks began studying at Wellesley, beginning five years of simmering attraction between the student and professor, despite the 12-year age gap. In 1900, Mary got a job at another college and with the threat of separation, the pair’s slow burn burst into an incandescent reveal via a series of increasingly passionate letters.

“Jeannette – Does it seem possible that it is only a few short weeks since we have felt first we could say all that we feel, without restraint or constraint? Two such proud ladies, too, each one afraid that she felt more than the other and determined to keep her own self-respect!” – Mary Woolley, 1900, providing evidence that lesbians have struggled to work out if their gf really fancies them for 100+ years

Mary’s new position was as president at Mount Holyoke, another all-female college, where administrators had to rotate students’ rooming arrangements every couple of weeks to stop them getting too “attached” to one another.

I know a nice place for young girls to go, Mount Holyoke you know, Mount Holyoke you know,
Where life’s a gay whirl and things never are slow, Mount Holyoke, Mount Holyoke you know.
…
Here Freshmen fall madly in love twice a week, With a Senior you know, with a Senior you know
They load her with flowers but never dare speak At Holyoke, Mt. Holyoke you know.
– actual lyrics from Mount Holyoke song book 1901

Mary had a job on her hands to rehabilitate Holyoke from its past as the seminary from Emily Dickinson’s era, into a modern educational establishment. When Jeanette graduated, Mary was quick to use her powers of lesbian nepotism to install her as a teacher in Holyoke’s English department, and they began their life together, firstly in the college’s residential Brigham Hall, where Mary would climb three flights of stairs every evening to kiss Jeanette goodnight. In 1909, they moved in together to the newly-built President’s House, and soon filled it with Collies.

Mary Woolley

Woolley and Marks weren’t the only Collie-loving female educators in the state; the couple knew Katherine Lee Bates and Katherine from their time at Wellesley, who gifted Mary and Jeanette a Collie dubbed “Lord Wellesley” in recognition. He was soon joined by a pup called Ladybird Holyoke, and the couple usually had four or five Collies at any one time, including:
Old Mannie, Bird, Flag, Tyke, Turvey, Buddy, Chuckie Chuckles, Heron, Bummy, Blue Boy, Arrow and Tuttle

When Mary spent six months studying schools in China, she was welcomed back with a great fanfare to campus, with students lining the road singing specially-composed songs, and the Collies all decorated in bows. Mary also traveled to Geneva as the only American woman to attend a global disarmament conference, and wrote home to her dogs while she was there.

Jeanette Marks

While Mary’s career and reputation went from strength to strength, Jeanette struggled with indifference to her teaching role, stuttering success in her writing career, and the frequent feeling that her position at the college was purely because of her relationship with Mary. What’s more, while Jeanette had been a dog-lover her whole life, and was the driving force behind their ever-growing collection of Collies, and sometimes bred them, the dogs became known as Mary’s and become an integral part of her increasing public profile. Jeanette was said to be more than a little disgruntled that Mary had appropriated the dogs as her own.

“everyone who knows her knows her love of dogs and knows their devotion to her. For more than twenty-five years collies have been as truly members of the household as any human.” Mary Woolley, about Jeanette Marks

Despite these ups and downs, the couple remained together, and continued their work at Holyoke until Mary was prematurely ousted from her position as president in 1937, during a squabble about her successor. The couple retired to Jeanette’s family home, Fleyr-de-Lyr in Westport, New York, although both kept active with writing and public speaking. Mary’s health gradually began to fail, and she suffered a stroke in 1944. Still, Jeanette reminded her that they had “a pleasant and kind old home, happy doggies, good food and many faithful friends.” Jeanette cared for Mary until her death in 1947, and remained at Fleur-de-Lys, swimming daily with her beloved Collies, until she died in 1964, aged 88.

Ethel Smyth

Indomitable composer, author and general force of nature, Ethel Smyth was born in Sidcup, Kent in 1858. At the age of twelve, Ethel was introduced to classical music by a governess who had studied in Leipzig. Immediately Ethel was determined to become a composer and follow in her teacher’s footsteps to study at the Leipzig Conservatoire. Her father, a stern military man, objected to the notion, which only emboldened Ethel, who spent the next five years waging a varied campaign of arguments, silent treatment and general obstreperousness until she got her own way.

Travelling to Germany in 1877, Ethel fell under the wing of composer and music scholar Heinrich von Herzogenberg, and under the spell of his wife Lisl. For the next seven years, Ethel honed her musical skills while conducting an affair with Lisl who, at eleven years her senior, would be the first in a series of quasi-maternal objects of obsession. Things took a soapy turn in 1882, when Ethel travelled to Florence to meet Lisl’s sister Julia and her husband, the English-American philosopher Henry Brewster. Ethel developed a deep rapport with both husband and wife; Henry made advances that she rejected, but Ethel would go on to form a lifelong friendship with him. Julia, on the other hand, Ethel fell hard for, and thought nothing of sending lengthy letters to Lisl describing her newfound infatuation with her sister. Sadly, Lisl had not got to the compersion chapter of The Ethical Slut and her relationship with Ethel began to break down. Lisl broke all ties in 1885, sending Ethel into a state of creative and emotional turmoil she called “The Desert.”

Ethel and Marco

Ethel found her way out of this bleak patch thanks to a gift from an old friend in Leipzig: “a huge sprawling yellow-and-white puppy of the long-haired kind generally seen dragging washerwomen’s carts. Half St. Bernard and the rest what you please, Marco was an entrancing animal…For twelve years that dog was the joy of my life, and latterly the terror of my friends.”

“A greater philosopher, a more perfect comrade for a busy woman, can have never existed” – Ethel on Marco

Marco stuck to Ethel’s side as she travelled around Europe, building her reputation as a composer of note. Marco also worked on his own reputation, interrupting a Brahms recital by knocking a table over (Brahms didn’t mind), and terrifying Tchaikovsky.

“Wherever I went Marco went, and wherever Marco went he made history.”

Ethel eventually consummated her relationship with Henry Brewster, which didn’t impress her hugely: “I remember arguing with him beside the Grandes Eaux as to whether any, any, any woman could ever have enjoyed such an experience.” Nevertheless, their relationship continued in the form of passionate letters, with infrequent meetings, while she pursued numerous entanglements with women. These included more keep-it-in-the-family love triangles with Mary Benson (an archbishop’s widow who shacked up with another archbishop’s widow, Lucy Tait) and her daughter Nellie, and with devoutly Catholic Pauline Trevelyan and her mother. In 1891, Ethel met Lady Mary Ponsonby, wife of Queen Victoria’s private secretary, and they enjoyed a lengthy relationship, no doubt helped by the fact that Mary didn’t mind Ethel’s constant flirting with other women.

Ethel and one of the Pans

After many years of travels round Europe and back to England, In 1899, Marco’s health deteriorated, and he was put down. On a friend’s recommendation, Ethel got a sheepdog puppy, that she named Pan, the first in a dynasty of Pan I – VI – all of whom she would chronicle in her book “Inordinate Affection: A Story for Dog Lovers.” Throughout the romantic inconsistencies of her life, the sheepdogs provided robust companionship, especially her favourite of the bunch, Pan IV, who she guiltily confessed she loved more than all the others put together.

“Mad keen on life in its every manifestation, yearly growing more beautiful, more adorable, and a more incredibly perfect companion, for seven and a half years we walked down the calendar, step by step” – Ethel describing Pan IV the way you wish your girlfriend described you

Despite increasingly failing hearing, Ethel consolidated her career a highly successful composer, with well-reviewed performances around Europe, and for more than a century was the only woman to have an opera staged at the New York Metropolitan. In 1910, Ethel took a break from music to fully devote herself to the women’s suffrage movement in England, specifically the militant suffragettes of the WSPU and their leader Emmeline Pankhurst, on whom she developed a giant and unrequited crush. The pair occupied neighbouring cells during their stint in Holloway Prison, where Ethel famously conducted a rousing version of her suffragette anthem The March of the Women out of her window, using a toothbrush.

Ethel and Virginia

In 1922, Ethel was made a Dame of the British Empire for her services to composition, but by the 1930s, her hearing loss forced her to all-but abandon music. Undaunted, she turned to writing, prolifically, producing nine volumes of autobiography as well as her dog chronicles. She was spurred on in her endeavours by the last of her great crushes, Virginia Woolf. Woolf was not particularly flattered at first: “An old woman of seventy-one has fallen in love with me. It is at once hideous and horrid and melancholy-sad. It is like being caught by a crab.” However, a woman of seventy-one has very few fucks to give, and Ethel mounted a successful campaign of badgering via letters, using killer lines such as “I had not meant to tell you. But I want affection. You may take advantage of this.” Although Virginia never returned close to the same level of affection, the pair wrote voluminous letters and met regularly until Virginia’s suicide.

Ethel’s health began to fail in the 1940s, and by 1944 she was worn down with illness and the premature death of Pan VI. Suffering from the pneumonia she would shortly succumb to, she told her nurse: “I think I shall die soon, and I intend to die standing up.” Although she did not manage that physically, she certainly stood up until the end with her indefatigable spirit.

Ethel and one of the Pans

Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas

Ultimate literary top Gertrude Stein and the woman whose autobiography she stole for herself, Alice B Toklas, met in 1907 in Paris.

Gertrude Stein with dogs

Gertrude had relocated there in 1903, after a brief and bored stint as a medical student, to start an art salon with her brother with an inheritance. Alice was ostensibly taking a long-planned trip with a friend to Paris, and met Gertrude on the day she arrived. They fell in love immediately, but shockingly took almost three years to move in together. Thus began several decades at their salon, with Gertrude writing, while Alice cooked, and the pair hosted the artistic and literary luminaries of the day, including Picasso, Matisse and Hemingway.

Gertrude and Alice got their first dog, a Majorcan hound called Polybe, while holidaying in Spain. He was reddish-brown with black stripes on the back, enjoyed eating flowers and resisting all their attempts to train him. Although no pictures exist of Polybe, he crops up a lot in Stein’s earlier works.

By the mid-1920s Gertrude and Alice were looking to advance their U-Hauling to the next level and sought out a summer home in eastern France. While they were waiting for the paperwork for their new home to go through, they spotted a blue-eyed white poodle puppy at a local dog show in Paris. Alice said she had wanted a white poodle for many years, after reading about one in Henry James’s The Princess Casamassima, which is quite a feat considering the book doesn’t actually feature one. Alice christened the puppy Basket, because she “said he should carry a basket of flowers in his mouth. He never did.”

Basket by Man Ray

They moved to their new country home, and soon Basket grew into a bounding giant, and a star in his own right among their circle of friends. Dadaist photographer Man Ray took a series of portraits of Basket with and without Gertrude, Dutch artist Kristians Tonny painted Gertrude with Basket, and Picasso gifted Stein and Toklas Hommage a Basket as an offering after his own dog, an Airedale named Elf, had trampled over their flowers and got into a tiff with Basket.

An hommage to Basket

Basket was soon followed by a Mexican chihuahua gifted to them by artist Francis Picabia, on account of their admiration of his own chihuahua. They named him Byron owing to his overly-fond admiration for his own sister. His arrival engendered great jealousy in Basket, who ran away for attention. Byron died of typhus, but Picabia gamely provided another chihuahua named Pepe, who although physically identical to Byron, was of a much gentler nature and loved by all.

Gertrude and Alice with Basket II

Basket died in 1937, but the couple soon replaced him with another white standard poodle that they acquired in Bordeaux, who they imaginatively named Basket II. Unlike his predecessor, Basket II was fully pedigreed, and when war broke out and Stein and Toklas were living under German Occupation, this purebred status allowed Basket II extra rations, as apparently the Nazis obsession with master races was not limited to humans. Sadly, the winter cold got to Pepe, who became ill during the occupation, and died. Basket II continued on in great health, outliving Gertrude, who died in 1946. Like his predecessor, Basket II featured in several artworks, including a portrait by Marie Laurencin, which he is pictured next to in one of the most sublime images ever produced.

Basket looking at Basket

It is an astonishing literary omission that, having been propelled to fame by The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas, Stein never thought to dedicate autobiographies to Basket I or II, or any other of their dogs. However, she is the first on our list to have written a film about dogs! One of her few French-language pieces, Film: Deux Sœurs Qui Ne Sont Pas Sœurs, is a modernist take on Gertrude and Alice’s acquisition of the first Basket. It features versions of themselves in their own car, a picture of two poodles and one actual poodle, and sounds like quite a trip.

Other pieces of Stein’s dog-infused works include Doctor Faustus Light the Lights, and her short play Poem An Identity, which contains the oft-quoted “I am I because my little dog knows me even if the little dog is a big one.” Reading the piece with an anachronistic eye, one imagines it could be a poem created by a neural network trained on the fever dreams of visitors to a West Hollywood dog park (both human and canine).

“The person and the dog are there and the dog is there and the person is there and where oh where is their identity, is the identity there anywhere. I say two dogs but say a dog and a dog.”

After Gertrude died, Alice finally reclaimed her own life story and put out a memoir in the form of a cookbook, containing such classic recipes as Hashish Fudge. She continued to look after Basket II until his death in 1952.

Migration Season

By the standards of the Yucatán peninsula, the female Ruby-throated hummingbird is a plain jane among hundreds of species that roam the jungle. Her heart is the size of a pencil eraser and beats approximately 1,260 times a minute. At the start of migration season she has only one goal in mind – she has to almost double her body weight, in order to survive a treacherous trip across the gulf of Mexico.

By the standards of the United States government, The Black-haired Mexican filmmaker (that’s me) is but one among thousands of immigration cases that come through a pipeline of the United States Citizen and Immigration Service (USCIS). At the start of migration season, she has but one goal in mind: build a strong enough case to survive the gauntlet of work-visa processing.

Like the Ruby-throated hummingbird, I too have a laundry list of things to do before I can ready to make a big trip, and they fill me with such foreboding that just writing them down here makes my anxiety bubble up and catch at the pit of my stomach. I have never really talked about my immigration experience so plainly as I have recently, and I think there’s a common factor between this particular instance and why I’m ready to face this head-on. Birding.

Ruby-throated hummingbird. Photo by author

Before I lose you entirely, let me lay down the basic difference between birding, and birdwatching. They each have their own merits, but birdwatching is largely sedentary. Think of your Nana watching the sparrows on the feeder. The mere act of watching brings her joy and for the birdwatcher, that’s enough. Birding is a little bit more…unhinged. The casual birder is just an obsessive birder who’s a liar. Birding in and of itself is the activity that surrounds looking for and identifying as many birds as you can in a given area, and even a given time. The extreme birder can be known to take part in “Big Days” where they search for the most bird species they can find and identify in a single day. The ultimate obsessive birder embarks on a Big Year, which is the attempt to see as many unique species as you can within the lower 48 during a single calendar year. It’s an easy thing to get sucked into if you like animals and the outdoors, because it plays like a worldwide scavenger hunt.

The first time I went out birding, I had just gotten my first serious guidebook and my grandfather’s binoculars for Christmas. I convinced my brother and sister-in-law to come with me, and since they are weirdos in their own right, there we all were: boot clad, wrapped in scarves and ready for whatever it is we were about to do. It almost felt like induction into a cult: “Come join me. Untold wonders await us.” But by the end of the day-trip, we were busy speeding in our van and recklessly chasing down hawks down dirt roads, accidentally trespassing, and knee-deep in snow trying to figure out if we were looking at a House Finch or a Purple Finch (it’s harder than you think). Near the end of the day on our way home, I realized I hadn’t just found a new hobby, I’d also found joy.

There are hundred of types of hummingbirds that nest in the American tropics. More than a dozen nest in the western United States, but if you’re looking at a hummingbird nesting east of the Great Plains, you’re looking at a Ruby-throated. The Ruby-throated hummingbird beats its wings more than 50 times per second and some may migrate from Canada all the way to Costa Rica. Almost all of them leave North America in the Fall. Some may cross Gulf of Mexico, making a journey in featureless blackness, but many go around, concentrating along Texas coast.

My own journey through American immigration is a bastion of privilege compared to thousands of humans who make arduous and sometimes futile journeys in order to make it home to family already abroad, or make sure that they are safe from the crumbling social structure and escalating violence of many cities. A dramatic uptick in unaccompanied child migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras has occurred since 2014 —with more than 50,000 Central American minors intercepted at the U.S.-Mexico border during the first 11 months of 2014, up from 10,146 two years earlier. The poem “Home” by Warsan Shire comes to mind: “no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear, saying – leave, run away from me now, i don’t know what i’ve become but i know that anywhere is safer than here.”

That migration, the one we make for necessity, seems like some of the most natural to me. The Ruby-throated hummingbird doesn’t choose to migrate North in a nonstop 900-mile journey across the Gulf of Mexico towards the eastern United States. The Ruby-throated understands its own limitations and that of its environment. It knows, in its tiny pencil-eraser-sized gut, that the best chance for her family is to breed in the Eastern Seaboard, so she goes. It’s not fun, and it’s definitely not easy, there is no guarantee that she’ll make it, but she knows if she doesn’t go, she won’t survive.

My own migration is less for the preservation of the species and more for the common reason a lot of immigrants travel North to the United States. With my skill-set, my hard work and my drive, I think I have a chance to make a life and a name for myself. Documentary filmmaking doesn’t really carry the same glamour as other parts of the film industry, but if there is somewhere where folks are looking to support people like me, it’s America.

Suddenly, my migrating instinct faced a tough adversary: bureaucracy. The USCIS is a supremely ineffective office. Underpaid, understaffed and overwhelmed, every day they take people’s lives in their hands and make sure enough boxes are checked for approval. When you’re a filmmaker, as opposed to, say, a factory worker, you have to make it very clear to an office full of folks who don’t know anything about film, that you are a legitimate influence in your workforce. You have to explain to them why it is that film isn’t a 9-5 gig with benefits, 220 work days and a set time for vacation. As of this week, my 6-month journey into the maw of immigration services has reached its final stage.

Like our Ruby-throated, I am so close to completing my journey. I have been away from the United States, my home, my life, not to mention my girlfriend for just about six months. There is one more leg to my journey and it’s the hardest one: I need to submit my case for approval and have a face-to-face interview with an immigration officer, and I am terrified. I’ve been flying through this process with single-minded determination. The Ruby-throated and I are coasting over open ocean and our journey is almost complete, but just like her, I’m weary of inclement weather. One misstep for me or one unforseen tropical storm for her and we’re done for.

I identify with birds so plainly. Their family structure, their teaching habits, their tenacity. Having “left the nest” pretty early in my life for boarding school, I’ve often found myself self-teaching a lot of hard fought lessons. I learned to maneuver heartbreak, depression, anxiety and frustration in a trial by fire. I learned to cope with the loss of a great friend, and I learned to rely on myself and myself alone.

Since I’ve been away, I’ve watched the start and end of migration season and looking for all the different species that have gone all the way to the States, lived a life and come back, I’ve both identified and envied the freedom of soaring over a border unencumbered. So, this is what the immigration process does: it makes you feel alone. It reduces you to a few pages and it expects you to be the exact person they want you to be. There are no gestures of kindness, there is no empathy, there’s just a cold, empty form that’s holding your future ransom in exchange for your personal information. So instead of dwelling on the inevitable, I bird.

In the past six months I’ve been stranded back in Mexico, I’ve seen over 35 new species, and I’ve clocked the regular visitors to my parent’s backyard. In a few weeks I’m looking to get out of here, and just like Ruby, there’s a million things to do before we have to take flight.

Lesbian and Bisexual Women of History Who Were Obsessed With Their Dogs, Part 1

Of all the queer erasure that has happened in history, probably the most egregious example was the simple coining of a phrase in the 18th century, by King Frederick of Prussia, a man. That phrase was: “dog is man’s best friend.” King Frederick was wrong: dog is lesbian’s best friend.

So let’s take a stab at rectifying the mistakes of the past by examining the many ways gay, bisexual, queer and other unquantifiably not-straight women have built lasting, meaningful and downright obsessive relationships with their canine friends over the years.

If you’ve been waiting your whole life to find people in history that really reflect who you are, today is that day!

Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, aka The Ladies of Llangollen

Famed runaways Eleanor and Sarah were both daughters of wealthy minor nobility, whose families lived close to each other in 18th century County Kilkenny. Ireland. They met in 1768, and struck up a close friendship based on common interests such as literature, philosophy and rejecting patriarchal notions of marriage. So aghast were they at the prospect of marriage that they hatched an elaborate plot to ditch the trappings of heteronormative life.

One night in 1778, Eleanor rode the twelve miles to Ponsonbys’ home, to meet Sarah as she leapt from the window of the family castle, dressed as a man and carrying the essential elements for any escape plan: a pistol, and a small dog. The dog in question was Frisk, Sarah’s lapdog, and it was potentially Frisk’s yapping that would undo their attempt to flee, as they were caught in a barn while waiting for a ferry to take them to freedom. They were caught and marched home to stew on their failure, and then try again several times.

Eventually, their families relented and released them to sail over the Irish Sea to Wales , where they set up their life together in a gothic house called Plas Newydd (New Mansion) overlooking the town of Llangollen.

Eleanor kept a detailed diary throughout her fifty years with Sarah in Plas Newydd, and the pages make frequent mention of their numerous dogs: Flirt, Rover, Bess, Gypsey and Sapho (yes, that Sappho, which was commonly spelled this way in the 18th century). So while their devotion to their pooches is not doubted, there has been a lot more speculation about the exact nature of their relationship to each other.

People who are sure they’re not lesbians include chief LoLl scholar and biographer Eleanor Mavor, the really adamant narrator on the Plas Newydd audioguide, and the ladies themselves, who tended to act all shocked, and even threatened to sue a newspaper for libel when they implied it. People who were sure they were lesbians include literally everyone else that was alive at the time and who were obsessed with their romantic escape, such as lesbian-of-note Anne Lister, the poets Byron, Shelley and Wordsworth, who all visited the Ladies in their Welsh home.

I think you should make your own minds up about this, so let’s recap the evidence :

• Leapt out of window to escape the patriarchy
• dressed in men’s clothes
• HOLDING A DOG.
• Proceeded to live together for 50 years
• during which they constantly referred to each other as “my beloved,” “sweet love” and “better half”
• Named a dog after Sappho (also named a cat Muff)

If you are not yet convinced, check out this casual diary entry from Eleanor on May 11th 1789: “My beloved and I then walked on the Velvet Carpet of the Mountain…”

I think we’re done here.

Frances Power Cobbe

Born in 1822 to a wealthy family north of Dublin, Frances Power Cobbe formed and voiced strong opinions from an early age, frequently arguing with her father about religion and ethics. Her first book on that topic, The Theory of Intuitive Morals, was published anonymously lest she bring the family name into disrepute. Her father died when she was 35, leaving Frances a small pension and, finally released from familial obligations to be a dutiful daughter, she immediately took herself off around the world.

Frances Power Cobbe

It was in Italy that she found a group of women living the independent, cultured and extremely gay lives she’d always dreamed of, spearheaded by notorious Sapphic actress and party girl Charlotte Cushman, also including artist Rosa Bonheur and the Welsh sculptor Mary Lloyd. In her own words she had found “young women in Florence and Rome thus admirably working their way; some as writers, some as artists of one kind or another, bright, happy, free and respected by all.” About the only thing she did not like about this idyllic situation were Cushman and her American friends’ prediction for waffles, which she called “an awful refection menacing sudden death.”

In Rome, Frances honed her skills as a journalistic writer, supplementing her paltry inherited income while exploring the political ideas she felt so passionately about. Two issues in her lifetime would rise to take precedence over others: women’s suffrage, with which she was actively engaged in the 1860s, and animal rights. Frances was staunchly anti-vivisection, and lobbied successfully for parliamentary rulings on the matter, as well as using her influence as a writer to shape public opinion. It can’t be underestimated the courage and conviction this must have taken, to fight against a male-dominated medical establishment whose arguments against her were based as much on misogyny as any principles they might have — one man described her as “a disenchanting mountain of flesh” because of her refusal to wear a corset, and John Ruskin, aghast that she should want to express herself so vociferously, deemed her a “cluttering saucepan.”

By 1958, Frances was in London, living with Mary Lloyd in a partnership that would last the rest of their lives. Although her purview of animal welfare was broad, Frances took a particular interest in dogs, authoring works contemplating their ability to think and feel such as The Consciousness of Dogs and Dogs Whom I have Met, as well as exchanging correspondence with Charles Darwin on the subject.

Hajjin

Frances riffed on the idea in her very fun novella Confessions of a Lost Dog; Reported by Her Mistress, freely available to read here. Published in 1867 to thank donors to the Battersea Dogs Home and advertise its good work, Confessions follows the life of Frances’s pet Pomeranian Hajjin (meaning pilgrim) from her own dog’s-eye view. The book covers essential topics such as birthing puppies, getting lost in the big city, and how not to cope when your mistress ghosts you for her queer pals (Frances visited Italy six times in total, and vividly imagines Hajjin’s distress on such occasions).

I could discern clearly, even at that early age, the essential difference between people who are kind to dogs and people who really love them. – Hajjin, from Confessions of a Lost Dog

Of particular interest are the times Hajjin mentions her mistress’s female “friends” and the judgements she makes on them according to their attitudes towards dogs. She describes one such unnamed friend, who must be Mary Lloyd, as so: “My mistress had her friend, a lady with whom she lived, and of whom I was a little jealous — a person very devoted to dogs, but with sterner views of discipline than I quite approved.” In doing so, she has perhaps described for the first time in literature the truth of lesbian domesticity.

Mary Lloyd

Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper – aka Michael Field

Poets, playwrights and intimate collaborators both in literature and the bedroom, Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper were also aunt and niece. Edith was born in 1862, when Katherine was 16, daughter of her elder sister Lissie, and from the get-go they formed an intense bond. When Edith was around 14 and frequently bed-bound with illness, Katherine would send her passionate letters from Bristol, where she was studying literature. By the time Edith was 16, the pair were devoted to each other; Edith went off to study with Katherine, and they proceeded to live together for the next forty years.

Love-delight has frolicked & throbbed unencumbered & ceaselessly.” Katherine Bradley, describing her relationship with Edith Cooper.

As part of a non-conformist family, rich from tobacco factories in the West Midlands of England, Katherine and Edith had been able to pursue more education than typical for Victorian women, and had written poetry from an early age. After little success publishing individually under pseudonyms, they began to collaborate on lyric verse and drama together, deriving the name “Michael Field” from the nicknames they had for each other. By their own reckoning, working together meant “we are even closer married” than lawfully wedded poets Robert and Elizabeth Barrett-Browning. Importantly, a man’s name would elicit a level of serious consideration that would never be afforded women: “we have many things to say that the world will not tolerate from women’s lips.” Their first work published under the name was a verse-drama called Callirrhoë, adored by critics who hailed Michael Field as the next Shakespeare. When Robert Browning inadvertently outed them as women, their subsequent work tanked, getting either bad reviews or none at all.

Nevertheless, the pair continued to write and live independent lives infused with a good deal of the drama they captured in their plays. This was most apparent in their relationships with dogs; an early episode saw Katherine renounce her Christianity for atheism in 1877, because the world was full of evil and the only good thing was her Skye Terrier. In 1897, Edith’s father went missing while climbing in the Alps, and was eventually found dead. To assuage their grief, the pair were gifted two dogs: the first, a Bassett hound from Edith’s sister Amy that they called Musico, and in January 1898, a Chinese chow puppy from friends in Bristol, who they named Whym Chow, after alpine climber Edward Whymper, who had helped look for Edith’s dad.

The pair were smitten with Whym and immediately began writing poetry praising his “full-furred loveliness“ and “coat of high strand like mountain juniper.” The Michaels elevated Whym above not only Musico, but above pretty much any other living being outside their own marriage. They moved to Richmond in London and plastered the walls with photos of Whym, filled their correspondence with tales of him, and steadfastly refused to leave him to travel abroad or do anything he didn’t like, such as listening to young men recite poetry, or visiting the seaside. Whym’s dominance over their lives irked many visitors, including their GBF, the painter Charles Ricketts who declared: “My lips would relish above all things a Chow ragout in pagoda sauce.”

Katherine with Whym

When Whym Chow became gravely ill in 1906, the Michaels went into hysterical overdrive, nursing him around the clock for two days. Eventually, they decided to euthanise him. This act triggered a wave of grief that would sweep them up for several years, and they began work on a book in his honour: Whym Chow: Flame of Love (free to read here).

Quote: “Michael & I love Chow as we have loved no human being” —Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper (The Michael Fields)

If you weren’t already a bit on edge from the whole niece/aunt thing, then this collection of thirty poems about their beloved (and I mean really beloved) dog will do nothing to make you more comfortable, a heady mix of erotic lesbian imagery and canine idol worship.

Poem: “Love Confessionals There Are”

Pillow, turf, nor sand, nor breast
As confessional I sought:
Nay, but down my face was pressed
In thy wondrous fur, unwrought

Rocked by grief, the Michaels began to sway back towards religion, in the hope it would offer the chance of an afterlife meet up. The Catholic Church, with its flair for drama and repression, was a surprisingly popular choice for queer women at the turn of the 20th century; Katherine and Edith both converted the year after Whym Chow died, and in their grief, their poetry seems to conclude that Whym Chow was essentially Jesus in their own personal holy trinity. Sadly, Musico’s death in 1909 did not generate quite so much of a ruckus.

In 1911, Edith fell ill with cancer, and started the slow process of dying. A new dog, Ferrar the Elk, eased the suffering somewhat, but she succumbed in 1913. Katherine contracted the same disease and died the following year (not before the nun nursing her fell for her). Just before she died, Katherine brought out a limited edition of Whym Chow: Flame of Love as an eternal memorial to their bond.

Katharine Lee Bates and Katharine Coman

Katherine Lee Bates, was a prolific author throughout her life in Massachussets, and famously wrote the lyrics to “America the Beautiful,” a song I never cared to realise existed until I was told a queer woman wrote it.

Katharine Lee Bates

Bates studied at Wellesley College, graduating in 1880, and after teaching at various other institutions, returned to Wellesley in the 1890s to become a professor of English literature and college dean. A crucial part of Wellesley’s magnetism for Bates was the presence of Katherine Coman, her “Joy-of-life”, a history and economics professor at the college. As Bates said: “It was never very possible to leave Wellesley [for good], because so many love-anchors held me there, and it seemed least of all possible when I had just found the long-desired way to your dearest heart.”

The couple formed a Boston Marriage, and in 1907, built a house, “The Scarab,” as a home for themselves and their various pets. Chief among their companions was their beloved collie, Sigurd, whom they had picked up when invited by a neighbour to pick out a puppy from a litter. Sigurd wasn’t on show, as he’d been chained up to be kept as a barn dog because he didn’t fit the pedigree mould. However, Bates and Coman thought him the most beautiful of all the dogs and took him home. The owners said “It’s a queer choice,” which of course in the context of that era means nothing, but in the context of today I would say proves this was an extremely gay situation.

The zest, the fun, the excitement Sigurd infused Into our human humdrum outwent all expectation.

Like any educated queer dog owner worth their salt, Bates dedicated an entire tome to their prized pooch: Sigurd Our Golden Collie and Other Comrades of the Road. The book goes into exhaustive detail about Sigurd’s lineage, puppyhood, first love, and the many adventures of his life.

By day, Sigurd bounded and frolicked through the countryside, with his mistresses in tow. By night, Bates and Coman read to him tales of great literary and historical dogs, although apparently Sigurd preferred poetry and “would softly thump his tail in cadence with the melancholy beat of a dog elegy.”

Katharine and Sigurd

My favourite episode, only alluded to in the book, but described in glorious detail by Albert Peyson Terhune in A Book of Famous Dogs, is when Sigurd makes a foray into am-dram with a part in a college play. After impeccable performances during rehearsals, on they day of the play Sigurd escapes and spends hours rolling around in mud in the woods before being reeled in as the curtain is about to go up. Backstage, he is minimally cleaned up, and when it comes time for him to leap onto stage, he instead slowly crawls onto the set and falls asleep.

“Then across the footlights of the auditorium was wafted a strange and horrid stench that permeated the whole house. Skunk aroma is not dissipated by a single sketchy bath when once it has imbedded itself in the mattress-thick coat of a collie.” Despite receiving rapturous applause, Sigurd did not pursue a further career on stage.

Sigurd died one morning after a lengthy, happy life, during his post-breakfast nap. Despite thinking they’d never be able to replace him, Bates and Coman did eventually get another collie, a melancholy dog they named Hamlet because he always acted like he’d just seen a ghost. Hamlet lived with Bates and Coman until Coman’s death from cancer in 1915. Bates celebrated their life together, publishing Sigurd Our Golden Collie in 1919, and in 1922 a book of her poems to Coman in Yellow Clover, A Book of Remembrance.

Radclyffe Hall

Famed author of notoriously depressing lesbian classic The Well of Loneliness, Radclyffe Hall was born in 1880 and from a young age developed a passion both for writing and for dogs. Throughout a childhood turbulent with the drama of her mother’s three marriages she made a series of canine pals, including her first dog, a pug named Joey, a poodle called Adolfe who got run over, and a terribly seasick Airedale called Yoi.

As a teenager she began to have affairs with women, and was frequently taken for a boy; her name by birth was Margarite, but to all her knew her closely she was John. In 1907, at the age of 27, she met Mabel Batten, a singer 25 years her senior. They began a relationship and moved in together; Mabel recognised Hall’s talent and encouraged her writing, as well as introducing her to a cultured circle of friends. Hall, with a toy fox-terrier called Jill in tow, met Una Troubridge, a cousin of Mabel’s, at a gathering in 1915. The pair were immediately smitten, but didn’t make a move to be together until after Mabel’s death in 1916.

Mabel Batten

In Una, Hall found a fellow sexual “invert” and dog-lover, though according to Una’s own biography of Hall, it was John that taught her to see animals as more than mere companions, and appreciate their rights as sentient creatures.

Quote: “I am perfectly aware that for people who do not love dogs, there will be too much about them in this story of John’s life; but it is her life I am writing and not theirs, and to her, from childhood onwards, dogs were always an integral part of existence. “

In fact, Hall was so consumed by her devotion to suffering animals that it was virtually impossible for her to go anywhere without encountering some creature that needed rescuing. She travelled frequently in Europe, and though she’d usually take at least a couple of dogs, canaries and even goldfish along, it was the norm that she’d end up finding some strays to take back too.

Some of her rescue dogs included Fido, a big white poodle bought from a street in Florence; Jane, a King Charles spaniel rescued from an area bombed during the Battle of Britain and Rufus, a sable Welsh collie from Battersea Dog’s Home, as well as an unnamed Great Dane weighing five stones (70 pounds) and a tiny Yorkshire terrier who needed its head fur plaited daily. Remember this is on top of their personal pooches, such as:

• an aggressive bull-terrier called Charlie that Hall took driving with her cousin/girlfriend round America
• Olaf, a blue Dane
• Prudence, a tiny Blenheim spaniel
• Raton, a petit brabançon bought in Paris
• Fortune, a French bull bitch
• and Mary Rose, a German black and tan dwarf pinscher who attacked a nun.

Beyond their own pets and rescues, Hall and Troubridge were also keen breeders of Belgian griffons and dachshunds, successfully competing at Crufts and Ladies’ Kennel Club competitions around Britain. Their champion hounds include Thora “The Fairest of Women”, Thorgils, Tinkie, and Wotan, sire of 73 puppies in his first year of breeding. The couple tended to have trouble letting go of their puppies, and would write voluminous instructions to prospective buyers which tended to put them off a bit.

Of the many dogs she shared her life with, Hall’s favourite was a petit brabançon called Tulip, who idolised Hall and had six toes on each paw.

Radclyffe Hall and Tulip

If it wasn’t already crowded enough with the two of them and half the animals in Europe, Una and John took a new entrant into their menagerie: Eugenia Souline. Initially hired by Una to nurse her when she fell ill in Paris in 1934, Eugenie and John struck up a passionate and volatile romance, exchanging many intense letters. Una wasn’t super happy about this situation, but nevertheless the three of them formed a rocky sort of relationship, that would continue until Hall’s death in 1943.

Hall never devoted an entire tome to any of her canine companions, quite probably because it would have been impossible to complete a catalogue of them all. She did make some references to them though — in her first novel The Forge, the dog Sieglinde is a fictional version of Thora, and she wrote a short story never published during her life, about temporarily adopting a stray called Bonaparte on a visit to Corsica.

Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge

As was inexplicably the fashion among some circles of queer women of the time, Hall was a noted anti-semite and Nazi sympathiser in the 1930s, as well as holding some unfortunately misogynistic views. What a shame it is that she could not extend her all-consuming compassion for animals to the human species.

Colette

Let’s stop and take a breather. At this point, if you’re a dog lover you’re probably thinking “I am a woefully inadequate human being who hasn’t even written a novel about my dog.” If you’re not a dog lover you’re probably thinking: “this goes some way to explain how crazy my ex-girlfriend was.”  Well, it’s not going to get any easier, because bisexual French writer and actress Colette takes things to a whole new level.

Ever had a lengthy photoshoot with your dog supermodel in matching owner/doggo clothing? Collete did that first. Do you often imagine what conversations your dog and cat might be having with each other? Well, Colette did that too. Not even dog-related, Colette was quite possibly the first person to publish AU celesbian fanfic — you thought your Krashlyn epics were an innovation? Collette had you beat by 80 years with her re-imagining of the previously mentioned Ladies of Llangollen as left-bank lesbians in Paris.

Sidonie Gabrielle Claudine Colette was born in rural Burgundy in 1873, and aged 16 was whisked off to Paris by Henry Gauthier-Villars or “Willy,” a family friend 24 years her senior and a notorious libertine. Willy encouraged both Colette’s writing and her budding attractions to other women, however, being a man he took both these things for himself. After encouraging Colette to pursue an affair with visiting American heiress Georgie Raoul-Duval, he secretly bedded Georgie himself. Colette’s Claudine series of schoolgirl stories based on her own experiences were published under Willy’s name, and he sold off the copyright, leaving her penniless when their marriage inevitably disintegrated. However, this was not before he arranged a promotional photoshoot for the Claudine books featuring Colette and her little French bulldog, Toby-Chien.

Toby was a constant companion to Colette, and although she shared her life with many subsequent dogs, he was her ultimate canine muse. Both her and Willy were both so attached to Toby that they fought for custody of him when they split, and eventually came to a sharing arrangement.

Colette embarked on a stage career to pay the bills, and in 1907 caused scandal when she and her lover Missy, the Marquise de Morny, performed the first ever girl-on-girl kiss at the Moulin Rouge. I’m kind of surprised the kerfuffle was not about how long it had taken to get a sapphic snog on the stage of Paris’s notably louche nightspot, but audiences were genuinely outraged at the sight of two women kissing, and police threatened to close down the cabaret. Colette had to keep her relationship with Missy on the down-low after this incident, but they did continue to see each other. Colette also had a short affair with Natalie Clifford-Barney because really, who didn’t.

Colette kept on writing, and her first work published under her own name was Dialogues de Bêtes in 1904, which was a series of short scenes of imagined dialogues between her beloved bulldog Toby-Chien and her equally beloved cat Kiki-La-Doucette (Kiki the Demure). Colette frequently features pets in her works, and was said to spend many hours picking fleas from Toby-Chien, her other bulldog Souci, or one of her twelve cats as part of her pre-writing ritual. Obviously this was a highly effective routine, as she went on to author over fifty novels.

Colette and Souci

Colette, a film with Keira Knightly in the title role, charting her life with first husband Willy and including scenes of their not-quite-three-way affair with Georgie Raoul-Duval, is out later this year!

Lesbians in the Wild: Do These Birds Look Gay Trivia Quiz

April was Trivia Meet-Up Month here at Autostraddle, and we tested your abilities to recall 90s trivia, celesbian gossip, activist herstory, and assorted plot points relating to four gay franchises (#<3LesbianJughead). We loved trivia so much and y’all had so much fun with it that we created a few more quizzes for you in May!

Now it’s time to turn our eyes away from the screen, pick our heads up out of our books, and look outside. Yes, today’s the day for the wildlife themed quiz you’ve been waiting for your whole entire life! Without even knowing it! Check out these lesbians in the wild.*

*Also includes some domesticated lesbians. 

BREAKING: Lesbian Cult Classic Stuffed Dog Tinkerbell Comes To Life

When Executive Editor Laneia told the Senior Editors at our Monday morning meeting, “our schedule for Tuesday is anemic,” I thought to myself, “wow, I hope there’s some breaking Kristin Stewart news between now and then so that we’ll have more posts to publish on Tuesday!” Little did I know (I knew) that breaking news was about to happen in my very own home! A beloved inanimate object, possessed by a sci-fi situation that’ll one day inspire a Freeform series that’ll get cancelled after two seasons, was about to give birth to its own self, but alive! That’s right: Autostraddle mascot and beloved companion Tinkerbell, having just turned ten years old last week, has been cloned and turned into a real dog, which basically means she’s come to life!

Some background: in January of 2008, a small dog/purse named Tinkerbell was born in Miami, Florida, where I was vacationing with Autostraddle co-founder Alex, our friend Haviland, and our ex-friend, a liar pretending to be from a rich family who did things like plan an imaginary vacation to a private island for Haviland’s birthday, vanish on the day we were due to to depart on said vacation and, then, when we tracked her down and demanded to know what the hell happened, distracted us by buying us a real trip to Key Biscayne. Not the worst way for everything to shake out, we know.

Another thing she did was buy me a $50 dog/purse from the Ritz-Carlton gift shop ’cause I’d said it reminded me of Paris Hilton’s dog Tinkerbell and wouldn’t it be funny if I had a dog purse and called it Tinkerbell. I believe I picked it up and made a joke and then looked at the price tag and then put it back. The next day, she’d bought it for me. While Haviland attempted to talk our friend, who vehemently opposed returning things as a general practice, into returning Tinkerbell (because fifty dollars for a stuffed dog is bananas), I was, quite honestly, falling in love.

Tinkerbell on the day of her birth

I knew Tinkerbell was going to be a ‘star.’ (I’m using scare quotes because being a star within the world of my 2008 blog readership and YouTube channel is probably about the same as being the star of a very small cult operating out of a former vacuum store in a one-stoplight town disconnected from major highways and the culture at large.)

Tinkerbell in Los Angeles, Age: One Month

I was correct. Before long, Tinkerbell’s star had eclipsed my own, which radiated with the glowing force of a vibrator trying to tell you that it’s dying right before it dies.

The fact that Tinkerbell was, ostensibly, a stuffed dog, and that I am, ostensibly, a grown woman, did not seem to take anybody by surprise. She was invited to blogger meet-ups:

tinkerbell in summer 2010 enjoying an iced coffee

Her pouch was used as a ring-holder for a lesbian wedding at A-Camp:

She was a legal attendee of the annual “Dinah Shore” event for lesbians who enjoy day-drinking, music and go-go-dancers with nice butts:

She made friends with major celebrities:

Tinkerbell with bisexual icon Angelina Jolie and Angelina Jolie’s ex-husband

She had her body autographed by Leisha Hailey and Cam Grey of Uh Huh Her after appearing in a prize-winning Uh Huh Her video at SXSW:

She became a trusted advisor of president Obama:

Tinkerbell talking to Obama about DOMA

She appeared in numerous L Word recaps:

Season Six

She was featured on a pin:

She even inspired an A-Camper to make me this incredible potholder!!

Furthermore, she hung out with semi-famous humans at the NewNowNext Awards, appeared in numerous semi-popular YouTube videos including the AfterEllen series “Alexi’s Closet,” was almost eaten by another dog, and, eventually, truly found her voice as a writer for Autostraddle.com. (Although honestly her greatest hits were often buried in early Autostraddle roundtables.)

Perhaps she even gave you advice once upon a time:

Honestly, though, at some point Tinkerbell did start feeling real to me. I’d gaze into her eyeballs (one of which is bigger than the other) and say, “I wish you were real, Tinkerbell!” This affection isn’t without merit. According to Pacific Standard Magazine, “from the worship of idols to an animistic worldview, various cultures from around the world have long believed that material objects either contain spirits or possess some kind of special connection to supernatural beings that act on their own accord.” So I’m not crazy. (Well, actually, I am crazy, but not for this reason specifically.)

Still, as I hope any Real Doll owner could tell you, at some point you really start to need the real thing, you know?

My roommate Erin, noted Straight People Critic, gives Carol Aird Tinkerbell Junior Bernard a tour of our apartment!

On Saturday my girlfriend Sarah and I went to the North Central Los Angeles animal shelter, where apparently they are so low on space that the chambers set up for three small dogs each are currently carrying 5-6 dogs each. One compartment held five small dogs — mostly Chihuahuas, which are abandoned at epidemic-levels in California — and they were yelping and jumping at the bars and scampering around to get our attention but behind them, in the back corner, all curled up on a little pile of blankets, totally uninterested in the chaos that surrounded her, I saw Tinkerbell! The shelter worker got her out and took us into a side room and I held her and Sarah held her and she was shaking for a long time before she realized everything was okay, and then she became mine: Carol Aird, a tiny whisp of a dog with a passion for glove lunches.

She still needed to get spayed, so we didn’t get to take her home right away. So Monday Erin and I went to the vet to pick her up and take her back to our apartment, all wrapped up in a flattering conehead she was really excited about:

We won’t really know Carol’s actual personality until she recovers from her surgery and gets used to her new life, but I think she’s gonna be pretty fancy and also low-key, although Chihuahuas are famous for being high-key and a little aggressive, so who knows! For now she’s a little groggy, just trying to get comfortable despite all the stitches, going through that weird part of life where the anesthesia wears off and nothing feels quite right.

To be honest, I was a little nervous to introduce her to her Alpha, Tinkerbell, because most dogs when they meet Tinkerbell, try to eat her. My little druggy Carol however possesses no such aggression. After a sweet photo sesh, I put Tinkerbell to the side of Carol’s bed so Carol would feel comfortable developing her own sense of self without worrying about measuring up to Tinkerbell. But then she stretched her little legs and scooted her little body back over to the other side of her bed and stuffed her little nose right under Tinkerbell’s. Starpower, ladies and gentlepeople:

UPDATE: Carol remains adorable!

Team Pick: Before There Were LOLCats, There Was ‘PURRRRR!’

Cat loving queers of the world (so, all of us), rejoice, for today is a very special day. Today I share with you important news about a cat publication that is a mixture of brilliance, innocence, humor, and wit. No, I have not found a new website filled with perfect cat memes. Better: I have discovered PURRRRR!, the “premier cat newsletter of the 1980s.”

via Carol Page & Atlas Obscura

Yes, you read that right. Before we all obsessed over cats on the internet, thousands of humans obsessed over cats in a newsletter. Bless this world friends, some things are still pure and good, truly.

And how did I learn about PURRRRR!, you may ask? Via Autostraddle’s very own former More Than Words columnist, Cara Giaimo! Cara now works at Atlas Obscura and published a profile over there featuring the creator of PURRRRR!, Carol Page, who just so happens to be Cara’s neighbor.

The profile is, suffice it to say, a gift.

via Carol Page & Atlas Obscura

There are so many good parts of the profile I don’t even know which bits to quote for you. You should just go read the whole thing and learn how Page chose the name PURRRRR!, what each newsletter featured, and why Page believes people will always find a way to read about cats.

And when you’re done, the most special treat: Cara and Atlas Obscura have digitized the first issue of PURRRRR!, so we can all indulge in the best cat publication from the years 1982-1991.

via Carol Page & Atlas Obscura

We can only hope Cara plans to digitize the entire collection. It’s the least she could do to make up for never writing another installment of More Than Words, ya know? (JK CARA WE ARE VERY GLAD YOU ARE THRIVING ELSEWHERE WE JUST LOVE CATS AND THIS NEWSLETTER AND ALSO YOU AND YOUR WORDS OKAY?!? OKAY.)

50 of the Gayest Nerdiest Things You Weirdos Named Your Pets

This month’s “Queer With Your Pets” gallery, which solicited reader photos of human beings with their animal friends, netted a whopping 230 submissions, and it’s a glorious gallery and a nice thing to have in our lives right now!

I noticed something very interesting while reading through the entire gallery despite my very public and consistent opposition to the existence of cats — y’all are super gay and also big nerds. Like if you were in my house and I woke up and walked downstairs and saw you sitting at the table I would say to you, “Hello, you’re gay and also a big nerd.” If your pet has a gay nerdy name and it’s not on this list I’m sorry I had to stop before the list became 230 items long, I love you to pieces and I love your pet and your pet’s name, unless it’s a cat, in which case I love looking at pictures of your cat but would rather not see it in person because of allergies. Thank you so much!

Feel free to vote in the comments on the Gayest Pet Name.

1. Ramona
“We got her when she was ‘Ramona Age 8 Weeks’ but she quickly grew into ‘Ramona the Pest.'”

2. Stella
“After Gillian Anderson’s character in The Fall”

3. Harvey Milk
“Full name City Supurrvisor Harvard Pigpen Poopy-pants Milk Karvonen-Quigley.”

4. Mary Oliver
“I adopted her after moving to New York because I couldn’t survive grad school on glitter trash island without the ‘soft animal of [my] body.’ That’s a line from Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese.'”

5. Lilith
“After the biblical Lilith”

6. Butch

7. Lady Galadriel
“Once, we were watching Lord of the Rings and Lady Galadriel appears on screen in all her terrifying glory, and I glance over to the girl cat to see if she’s paying attention, and I swear she was literally glowing. Like an elfin goddess. She named herself.”

8. Countess Sparklybitch
“In honour of Countess Markiewicz, a heroine of the uprising.”

9. Batman
“I changed Batman’s name from Brian… it didn’t seem to suit him.”

10. Scout
“I agreed [to name her Scout] cause I love To Kill a Mockingbird.”

11. Scout
“In honor of Brenda’s time as a Girl Scout”

12. Captain Killian
“A badass but sensitive pirate (AKA Captain Hook!) on ABCs Once Upon A Time.”

13. Whiskey
“We got Whiskey when she was a puppy in CT (we lived in Boston at the time). We named her after Whiskey in Dollhouse (she only ever wanted to be the best!) although now we just sound like alcoholics a lot.”

14. Whisky
“He looks like a delicious whisky and I think it’s a pleasantly gender neutral name.”

15. Brice
“After Williams-Brice Stadium, the football home of the University of South Carolina Gamecocks.”

16. Henry & Hazel
“Henry’s full name is Henry Tim Riggins. Henry because he’s a little gentleman, and if you don’t get Tim Riggins, I can’t possibly explain it. Hazel’s full name is Hazelnut Clover, and it’s because we like old lady names. Plus nature-y things. The alliteration with her brother’s name is also good!”

17. Ziggy
“Ziggy is short for ziggurat, which means ‘strong tower.'”

18. Matti
“I was seeing a girl at the time who reignited my interest in baseball cards and more specifically Don Mattingly, so we named her after him.”

19. Luna Fluffgood

20. Luna
“I named her Luna, because I’m a witch, and I also love Sailor Moon, and her astrological sign is Cancer, which is ruled by the moon.”

21. Gertrude
“I named her Gertrude, after Stein, because she reminded me of an elderly lesbian.”

22. Taro
“Taro / 芋仔 is basically a Taiwanese potato, and he’s a little potato for sure.”

22. Junia
“The first (and possibly only) woman apostle that Paul mentions in the New Testament.”

23. Bishka
“I named her Bishka because it’s the diminutive for Albina – the name of my celebrity “root.”  Albina in various languages means “white”, and her namesake is known for being a mercurial ice queen which fits perfectly with my cat’s tendency to be incredibly affectionate for 15 minutes but protest loudly for the rest of her life if you dare to pet her outside those confined periods. Bishka is a very lesbian cat because she hates male cats, rocks an alternative lifestyle wardrobe without complaint, and is really good at processing her feelings openly and loudly. She’s very much a teenager in her angst and emotions, and my girlfriend and I have been pouring our energy in helping her manage her stress, but sometimes all we can do is let her storm off and have her tantrums in private because her moms will just never understand how life is so unfair.  She loves using hands as a pillow and sometimes will knead fleecy blankets while simultaneously chewing on them (something I’ve dubbed her “nom-and-knead”)”

24. Neville
“I’m a huge Harry Potter fan”

25. Mikoto
“…an anime character who turns into a cat when she gets hungry.”

26. Leonardo DiCatrio
“I debated whether to name him after Leonardo DaVinci or DiCaprio. Ultimately, the pun won out.”

27. Sprout
“a member of the band Northern State.”

28. Lucy
“I named her after Lucille Ball, which, IMHO, is pretty gay.”

29. Charles Avocado VanGogh
“I wanted his name to be VanGogh (my favorite painter), my ex wanted his name to be Charlie (after Charlie Day from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia). I took up calling him Charles, which really happened to work out once I realized RuPaul’s last name is Charles. And I loved Avocados, so it was natural to make that his last name.”

30. Elliot
“…after Elliot Reid, the Scrubs character (one of my favorite shows).”

31. Moz
“a nickname for Morrissey”

32. Firepaw
“Paw’s full name is Firepaw because I was 10 and very into the Warrior Cat series.”

33. Jezebel
“My partner and I chose ‘Jezebel’ because we liked it, but it turned out to be a very accurate description – she is the queen of all of us.”

34. Waverly
“After our favorite brave little toaster, Waverly Earp.”

35. Neera
“My name in Persian means goddess of water, so when I was looking for names for her I learnt Neera means ‘pure water’ but also nectar/wine which i thought was a fun fit!”

36. Esme
“Esme” means loved, and also shining (think of the emeralds!), and we have several fictional Esmeraldas that we like (including granny Weatherwax from Discworld and Esmeralda from The Hunchback of Notre Dame).”

37. River
“I named her for two of my favorite strong, female, syfy, characters, River Song and River from FireFly.”

38. Prim
“I didn’t think she’d make it and I definitely felt like I volunteered as tribute, so I named her Prim (Hunger Games).”

39. Fergie
“…after Duchess Fergie, who nobody knows anymore”

41. Beverly
“Dr. Beverly Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation”

42. Clark
“…after Clark Kent, because I’m a huge Superman fan, but also sort of Clarke Griffin from The 100.”

43. Grand Duchess Faolin Von Pixelface
“The first half of her name is after a video game character (Guild Wars 2) and the second half is because of the single white dot or pixel on her forehead.”

44. Giles
“One of my favorite Buffy characters is Rupert Giles.”

45. Gordie Howe
“Named after the Detroit hockey legend.”

46. Kiki
“I love the film Kiki’s Delivery Service and couldn’t let go of the idea of naming my smoky grey cat after an adorable witch.”

47. Kenzi
“From Lost Girl.”

48. Agatha Kitty
“Yes, I like Agatha Christie. No, I have not seen the Doctor Who episode.”

49. Stewie
“Stewie, whose full name is Kristen Stewart (because let’s face it, they look exactly alike), was surrendered by her previous owner to Indianapolis Animal Care Services me would suit him very well.”

50. Auto
“Take a wild guess why I decided on that name.”

How Koko the Gorilla Describes Some Words Will Ruin You

If you don’t know how famous Koko, the western lowlands gorilla, is — for some perspective —she has a PR person. I know this because I once contacted Koko’s PR person for the use of some of Koko’s photos and was given a no. Also, in addition to being passed on by Koko the gorilla’s PR person, I don’t even know someone with a PR person, so that’s where I’m at in comparison to an animal only 13 years older than me.

Given Koko’s accomplishments, though, a PR person makes sense. She’s been on the cover of National Geographic twice. She’s had movies and books made about her. There’s a whole website dedicated to her daily goings-on. People pay top dollar for her paintings! Celebrities come to her.

At the heart of the buzz that surrounds Koko is her unusual capacity for language, something that amounts to a signed vocabulary of over a thousand words, and something credited to her handler and caregiver for over 40 years, animal psychologist Dr. Penny Patterson. It’s also something some people doubt the validity of, but I choose not to be one of those people because that’s my right as an American and even though I understand that a large part of primate communication is mimicking, I believe that the bond between Koko and Penny is one that cannot be explained by traditional science and if you want to fight me I’ll see you in the comments.

A screenshot from the PBS documentary about Koko

It’s also possible I’m so willing to accept that Koko can understand and communicate complex feelings and ideas because some of the things she comes up with to describe certain words have been known to derail my entire day and I want that kind of magic to be real. Her description for death in particular will never in the history of words be topped, and I feel it is my duty to share it and others with you, admittedly on a site that doesn’t make total sense for this kind of content, but I write here and love her, and who are you, the cops? Enjoy these masterpieces sourced from the Koko’s blog, Koko’s youtube channel, the PBS documentary now available on Netflix, Koko, The Gorilla Who Talks, and collections of interviews and studies.

On death

comfortable hole bye

On a person not understanding you

bad, fake

On masks

eye hat

On rings

finger bracelet

On lions

more cat

On yogurt

milk fruit candy food

On grief

bad sad

On streams

nice drink

On things that displease you

dirty toilet, rotten stink

On earthquakes

darn darn floor bad bite

On insults

think dirty devil

On guilt

sorry bite scratch

On remembering something unpleasant

red red red bad sorry

On aging

trouble old

On that awkward moment when you want someone to leave

time bye you

On pomegranates

red corn drink

On ice cream

my cold cup

On a sad woman

cry lip

On not wanting to see something

unattention

Dogs I’ve Known and Loved

We talk a lot about cats on this website, which is fine, they’re like white noise machines and take pleasure in scaring their owners by gifting them dead animals, but everyone knows dogs are the only pure things on earth. My life is especially reflective of this verified fact. The only times I’ve openly wept on a plane was during an in-flight screening of Marley and Me and another time when I was listening to a podcast about service dogs. I’ve forgotten coworkers names who I worked with last year but I can tell you the name of a dog that was a regular at a coffee shop I frequented over five years ago.

Her name was Zoe, by the way, and she exists in a special part of my brain along with the rest of the dogs I’ve come to know through dog walking, dog sitting, working at a dog boarding facility, and in general being a person whose days-long stints of silence have been broken by a dog in public.

Look, you clicked on this. You know why you’re here. You’re here to read about dogs I’ve known and loved, who you can now also know and love. Relax, it’s Friday. Enjoy some dog content. The names alone are worth it. Like:

Gilbert, the bloodhound who instead of running could only trot sideways like a dog version of the grapevine.

Kenmore Peoples, AKA “Mr. Peoples,” the basset hound who would stare at you from all areas of a room awaiting eye contact before making his way to your area.

Cody, AKA “Cody Bagel,”  the beagle who was a notorious rule-follower and rule-enforcer, and with whom I would do “Cody Curls,” an activity that mimicked bicep curls.

Frisbee, the golden retriever who would only sit if it was on top of a crate.

Marble, the great pyrenees whose self care in stressful situations consisted of forming herself into the smallest nook of a playpen.

Lula and Daisy, Italian spinone sisters with hearts of gold, arms like spiders, and hugs like grandmothers.

“The Bad Girls Club” consisting of Abby, Layla, Stella, Bailey Jones, and Baby Girl.

Cooper, the black lab and my dog who has exactly one eyebrow and who I genuinely tried to text once.

Buster, the basset hound banned from Pet Smart due to a terrible attitude.

Pancake, the beagle whose angelic face was overshadowed by her intimate relationship with a couch.

Snickerdoodle, the teacup yorkie who is the only dog that’s ever terrified me to my core.

Gally, the great dane who bowed every time you entered a room.

Patty, the toothless pitbull we found on the side of the road in the rain who wore the hell out of a t-shirt.

Georgia, more fawn than a dog, who when she’d jump up to hug me reminded me of Rachel Green for some reason???

Murphy, the king charles spaniel whose webbed paws made him waddle.

Waffle, the deaf bulldog whose only mission in life was to get the ball.

Daphne, a corgi mix who hated men and would celebrate direct eye contact with exactly four tail wags.

Ellie, the teacup poodle who loved watching Roseanne and one time wagged her tail when someone on television did a good dive with minimal splash.

Panda, the whippet in haut couture.

Sarah, the border collie whose only joy was berating people who wore hats in public.

Bernie, the bernese mountain dog terrified of bees!!!

Mr. Pants, the puggle whose name was Mr. Pants.

Don’t forget, I love you.

Queer Crip Love Fest: Love Sounds Like Purrs

Last time on Queer Crip Love Fest, we revealed my personal biases and came down firmly on the side of Team Dog. But because I know my audience, I concede that cats, too, must have their day. Leah* is a 43-year-old software engineer and cat mom, and she reached out to me with one of the most powerful stories we’ve featured yet.

I was raised in a very abusive household. I survived incest by both my father and mother, and at 17, I escaped by going to college 600 miles away. I got fibromyalgia the spring of my freshman year. I struggled to keep up with classes because the alternative was moving back in with my parents, which I ended up doing after sophomore year anyway. A few months later I met the man I ended up marrying. He was abusive but he supported me when I was unable to work or go to school. After almost 20 years with him, I managed to escape and I’ve lived on my own since. It’s a constant struggle to support myself but I’m happier than I’ve ever been. I feel like for the first time in my life, I can finally be my true self. I consider myself a baby queer because I’ve only recently come to grips with my asexuality.

I couldn’t have made it through the years of therapy and coming to terms with the incest without my cat, Mr. Pants. I adopted him when I first moved in with my ex. He wasn’t the world’s smartest cat but he was incredibly sensitive. He could be sound asleep in another room but if I started crying he’d come get in my lap and purr until I felt better. The year he died, I adopted Sweetie Pie, another big, beautiful tomcat. He’s not quite as empathic as Mr. Pants, but he earns his name every day.

This was most expansive QCLF interview to date, and we covered so much more than I was able to include here: navigating the workforce while disabled, the relief of a correct diagnosis, internet friends, service animals, and more. Because this is Autostraddle, I’ve condensed our conversation to focus on queerness, disability, and cat stories.

I love that you consider yourself a “baby queer.” What’s it been like to come out as asexual later in life?

I’m not sure what it’s like to come out at the “usual” time of adolescence or early adulthood; not that there’s a typical journey, but mine’s certainly unusual. One thing that’s difficult to understand about sexual assault and abuse, like what I’ve been through, is that humans are wired to respond to certain touch no matter how we may feel emotionally. All too often perpetrators use that against us. It’s a painful and difficult thing for victims to cope with, this feeling that our own bodies have betrayed us.

For a long time I didn’t even know asexuality existed. Then I thought that I couldn’t be asexual because for me it’s not all asexual, all the time. I still masturbate now and then. I can imagine having sex but if given the opportunity I couldn’t work up the enthusiasm. I’d rather have a deep, thoughtful conversation or tell dirty jokes until sunrise.

I haven’t come out to many people. Most people assume I’m straight, especially if I mention past hetero relationships. I have a lot of straight privilege, and I know it. On the other hand, asexuality comes with its own set of stereotypes. People assume that we’re missing a precious piece of our humanity. I’ve heard people say that if they lost the ability or desire for sex they’d want to kill themselves. There’s a lot of crossover with disability there, too. Like somehow our lives are less than or not worth living, when we know there’s so much more to life.

I get that a lot with disability, too. My disabilities – fibromyalgia, depression, and anxiety – are invisible. When I tell people I get a lot of “but you look so healthy!” or “but you seem so normal!” First off, what the hell is normal and why do I need to be it? Second, how am I supposed to look? Do I have to be in a wheelchair? Do I need a cane? What will it take to convince you I’m not making shit up?

Oh yes, been there. So many times!

My therapists have always come at my sexuality like it’s something I needed to work on and heal from. To some extent that was true — I had a huge amount of guilt and shame I was carrying around that actually belonged to the people who hurt me. I remember one therapist saying “It’s enough that you want to want to have sex.” I’m sure that’s very useful and reassuring for most victims, but it messed me up. Even now, I want to want to have sex. Every movie, TV show, or romance novel is telling me I want to want to have sex. Of course I want to be like everyone else. Of course I want to please my (hypothetical) partner. And yes, even an asexual person can enjoy sex now and then.

“People assume that we’re missing a precious piece of our humanity… There’s a lot of crossover with disability there, too. Like somehow our lives are less than or not worth living, when we know there’s so much more to life.”

My sexuality isn’t something I need to overcome. It’s not something that’s broken or missing or was stolen from me. As far as asexuality goes, the psychology community is still stuck in their old attitudes about queerness being a mental illness.

Even in disability communities, people can throw “asexual” around like a slur — as if it’s only a negative stereotype, and not something we could actually be.

I have a lot of the gold-star asexual traits that keep most people from questioning my sexuality: I’m cis, socially adept, I’m attractive, I’m sex-positive, I’ve had hetero sex, and I look under forty. On the other hand, I’m a disabled victim of sexual abuse — but people don’t know that unless I tell them. For years, therapists and psychiatrists told me that that when I got better I’d feel sexual again. When that didn’t happen I felt like I must have done something wrong. It wasn’t until I felt like I’d healed from most of the abuse and I still didn’t want sex that those feelings were valid.

“I could be ace as fuck one day and attracted to someone the next; it doesn’t change who I am.”

It’s kind of like when I first got sick and everyone told me I was making it up or just lazy and I started to believe it. There’s so much societal pressure to be straight and to want sex, of course we feel like rejects or losers when we don’t fit that mold. I think non-cishet people are better at thinking outside the box because from the get go we’re forced to question society’s idea of what love means. I could be ace as fuck one day and attracted to someone the next; it doesn’t change who I am.

I want to talk a little bit about dating. As a disabled person the thought of dating, especially dating cishet men, is exhausting. Disabled people are twice as likely to be victims of interpersonal violence and I never want to go through that again. I believe my ex targeted me because of my disability. Intimate partner violence is all about power and control, and it’s easier to control someone who’s disabled.

For most of our relationship my ex didn’t want me to work. Over the years I learned to cope with my disabilities, healed from my trauma, and was better able to function. A few years ago my ex decided that I should work and he should stay home. I don’t entirely know why but he seemed to think that it was something I owed him, since he’d done it for me. In a healthy relationship people don’t keep score. We don’t look after our partner because we expect to be compensated down the road.

In a way that was the last straw. I decided that if I was going to work that hard, it would be for me.

I don’t think I’m in much danger of becoming a victim again. For one thing, I know what to look for. More importantly, for the first time in my life I have self-esteem and I don’t take shit from anyone. But it’s still exhausting to be on guard and be ready to fight back if someone crosses my boundaries.

“I decided that if I was going to work that hard, it would be for me.”

Does disability affect how you experience love also?

Being disabled, especially becoming disabled as a young adult, has taught me things that most people don’t learn until later, if at all. When I first got sick I used to make plans for all the wonderful things I’d do once I got better. It took some time, but I realized that life is too short to wait to do wonderful things. Maybe I can’t go skilling or backpacking the way I used to but I still love the outdoors. Instead of backpacking I’ll go for road trips, long drives through the mountains or the prairie or the desert and see the beauty of this country. I love to garden and bake and I even make berry jam. My garden is pretty accessible, too. I grow tomatoes and other crops in a self-watering planter.

Fig tree with cat cameo

At least with friendships, I find that being disabled forces you to find out who really cares and who doesn’t. I can’t predict when I’m going to feel good and when I need to stay home and rest. That makes planning ahead, even for the weekend, tricky. The friendships that lasted are with people who listened when I said, “Even though I keep canceling at the last minute, please don’t stop inviting me.” Even though it’s hard for abled people to understand what my life is like, the ones who try are the ones I keep around. They don’t say stuff like, “Well you made jam all day last weekend. I can’t see why you can’t come to my party.” They figure out that disability isn’t black and white; it’s a continuum.

“Even though it’s hard for abled people to understand what my life is like, the ones who try are the ones I keep around.”

What kind of support did you have in recovering from trauma?

I’ve been in therapy for about 20 years, so I have a lot to say about that. When I first started to recover my memories, I was very suicidal. I didn’t want to die but the pain was so bad I felt I couldn’t go on. Plus I had become disabled only two years before, had to drop out of school, was stuck living with my abusive parents—it was a mess.

I spent eight weeks, first inpatient and then outpatient, in a unit for victims of sexual trauma. The program was amazing. I’m sure I wouldn’t be alive today if I hadn’t had some kind of help. There’s something so powerful and healing about sitting around with other victims, swapping stories, making the darkest of jokes about it, and laughing your asses off.

I’m glad you had a positive experience; I know a lot of disabled people (including me) have complicated relationships with hospitals and that kind of thing.

Overall, yes. Day by day, it was difficult. That hospital was excellent but there were issues. A friend of mine got her hands on a plastic knife and scraped the hell out of her shin. The nurse decided she wasn’t going to treat it because it was self-inflicted and it got infected. The very first morning I was there, the nurse came in while I was sleeping and took blood. Can you imagine doing that to a victim of violence? I woke up with a needle in my arm and freaked the fuck out.

What? Ugh. Although truthfully, I can’t say I’m surprised.

That’s one thing I’ve learned as a disabled person. Even when I was on Medicaid I could find good health care providers, but I had to go look for them. I don’t think most people get that—how it’s a full time job just to get and keep public services when you’re disabled.

That gets overlooked so often.

The best therapists I’ve had are the ones who push me. Any good therapist will be supportive but the best ones really pay attention to what you’re saying — and not saying — and challenge your assumptions. They get you to think about how you think. It’s the reason I’ve been able to heal from so much trauma, to learn to really love myself and have healthy relationships with other people.

I wish I could bring a pet to therapy. For years I brought a stuffed tiger with me instead. I’d take that tiger with me when I had to get well woman exams, too. To hell with what people thought of a grown person carrying around a stuffed animal. Mr. Pants was jealous of that tiger.

Meet Sweetie Pie

I love that animal companionship has been so powerful for you. Tell me about Sweetie Pie!

He has his own origin story. Back in 2008, I moved from Colorado to Iowa. The day after my ex and I moved in, Mr. Pants got sick. He was only 13, but he died of cancer two weeks later. I was devastated. He helped me get through the worst of the healing from my childhood trauma. He was super special.

I started volunteering at my local animal shelter in Iowa. (They’re awesome and deserve a shout out: the Animal Rescue League of Iowa in Des Moines.) One day I was visiting with the cats and spotted this big, beautiful guy. I opened the cage and started to pet him. He immediately turned upside down and licked my nose. It was like he’d decided I was going to be his mom now.

He’d had a rough time of it, too. I don’t think he’d ever been inside a house before — he was fascinated by the toilet! He was really scared of dogs and thunder. So I was gentle with him and he was gentle with me and the rest is history.

Oh gosh, that’s wonderful. What is it about animals that feels so comforting and healing?

I learned from an early age that it was dangerous to trust people. Because of severe allergies, I couldn’t have a pet until I was a teenager. I was lucky enough to be able to take riding lessons and I loved being around the horses. I’d spend hours in the barn, brushing the horses and talking to them. Touch is such a powerful and underrated thing, especially for victims of abuse and people with disabilities. Animals are one way for us to find the love and affection we so desperately need in a safe way.

“There’s something so satisfying about having a limp, drooling cat asleep in your lap. It’s such a powerful sign of absolute trust and love.”

Cats have been elemental to me learning about healthy boundaries. They tell you where the line is and enforce it. It’s a beautiful thing. I think animals teach us humility. If we want to communicate, we have to learn their language. Like with Sweetie: I approached him slowly, let him sniff me, and said hello in a cat-friendly way. That’s why it took him all of 30 seconds to decide he wanted me to rub his belly!

I’m glad that people seem to be getting better at accepting the deep bond between people and pets. Some people have more superficial relationships to their pets and that’s fine, but for me it’s always been a deep, mutual friendship. Yes, sometimes Sweetie just wants me to feed him, but he loves me for more than food. There’s something so satisfying about having a limp, drooling cat asleep in your lap. It’s such a powerful sign of absolute trust and love. Maybe I’m like a cat because I don’t trust easily and I can appreciate what a gift that trust is.

“You can’t tell me animals don’t get sarcasm.”

For years my ex felt safe to me because at least he never hurt me sexually. The abuse made me feel unlovable, but my cats have proven to me every day that’s not true. And cats aren’t like dogs; they’re a little more conditional with their love. Even if they love you, they don’t pass out in your lap unless they trust you. To me, love feels like a warm, limp, happy body in my lap and sounds like purrs.

My cat likes to tell me he loves me by acting like I’m the worst cat mom in the world. I think it’s a cat thing. Like when we were driving a thousand miles in the U-Haul and he hated every minute of it. I knew he was okay because of the way he’d glare at me. You can’t tell me animals don’t get sarcasm.

Classic cat.

Yup! Now that I’m older, I get the Crazy Cat Lady label sometimes. But because of my experiences, it’s easier for me to think outside of “normal.” I’ve lived such a difficult, challenging life. I see people my age giving in to societal or family pressure and doing what’s expected of them, whether that means going to college, picking a career, getting married, or having children. My experiences pushing myself to my limit in college showed me that there’s so much more to life than work. I learned early that if you don’t feel good, nothing else matters much.

*Leah is her chosen pseudonym.

Holigay Gift Guide 2016: Stocking Stuffers for the Cat (Lover) in Your Life

If there’s someone in your life who has a cat, there’s a great chance that any gift you give them will also become a gift for their cat. Since becoming a cat parent three years ago, nothing is just mine anymore. I no longer have solo ownership of anything; instead, three soft fat blobs who don’t pay any bills have laid claim to anything of mine that they want. It’s a great situation we’ve got worked out.

When shopping for gifts for your cat-loving friends, it’s best to keep that idea in mind and buy things that not only are for the cat-lover but are also for the cat. Some of my favorite gifts have been cat-themed and also actual gifts for my cat. I once received a gift at a secret Santa party and before I even opened it, I knew it was catnip and I was immediately excited. Fill their hearts with joy, and their cats’ hearts with delight.

Cat Toys

This is an entire stocking full of cat toys! It’ll be lost within two weeks, max. Every single one of these small toys will end up under the covers, under the bed, under the fridge, or under the stove. But for two weeks, your friend will be able to throw one of these across the room when she wants to distract the cat long enough to pee.

These sort of small, throwaway toys are the best, especially for busy, guilty pet parents. They’re easily replenishable and cats really will lose their shit over them. You can also get themed packs that are just crinkly toys, or toys with feathers, or even a pack that’s just those weird fuzzy mice toys (I hate those toys).

Catnip

Catnip! It’s the greatest herb in the world. You can make tea out of it, or even put it in your bath, and it gets your cats high! There are so many ways you can buy catnip. If you get your pal a packet of seeds, it’s a super easy herb to grow and she can add some kitty-safe greenery to her home. You can also get already dried catnip. For the holidays, be a little fancy and get your pal some organic, small-batch catnip, maybe? Luxury all around!

There’s also an abundance of catnip themed accessories and decor. Ecobota on Etsy sells really beautiful prints of catnip plants, if your cat-loving friend is also artsy as hell and needs some art to adorn their wall. Carry around a piece of your cats’ heart close to your heart by either wearing this pendant literally filled with catnip or this one that lets the world know you’re your cats’ favorite trap queen. There’s also some catnip preserved in resin and a catnip molecule necklace if you need even more options.

But one of the best ways to give a catnip gift is a catnip filled felt toy. These are hilarious and whimsical and every time I find a new one, I can’t help but buy them! There’s nothing quite like watching my fat feline son roll around losing his mind over a pop tart that’s filled with catnip. You can also get a few loaves of bread, some sardines, or a taco to give your cats a nice dinner. Follow it up with a fortune cookie to remind them of how special they are. It’s all so cute! And filled with herbs!!

Yes Cats

Get these gifts for your friend to be a good wing person. Science says those who love cats want to smooch up on other people who like cats, and with the gift of a zine, a tee-shirt, or an attractive enamel pin, you can help your friends (or yourself) become immediate babe magnets. Also, people in the know will see these gifts and connect them to Autostraddle dot com the website, immediately sparking a conversation.

Laser Pointer

It’s a key ring, it’s a toy, and it’s and always needed gift because those damn batteries always die. Every cat owner could use another laser pointer and they’re the perfect gift because there’s literally no such thing as having too many. The laser pointer really is one of the easiest and most fulfilling gifts ever because it’s multifunctional and almost every (indoor) cat will completely go bananas over the site of that red dot. Some pointers even have replaceable tips, so picky cats can chase also chase around a star, a heart, and other exciting shapes. While you’re stocking up on stocking stuffers, you might as well also get some batteries.

Bring Your Cat to Work

Maybe your friend really misses their cats while they’re out all day and want a way to think about them and remember them. You can do your part and help to make their office as cat themed as business casually possible. First things first, get them this desk plaque to make sure that they get as many opportunities as possible to talk about their cats in public. It’s one of a cat person’s favorite pastimes. These casual cats will help her to keep track of the date throughout 2017. Grad student offices have mini fridges because writing alone in the dark is sad and snacks make it better. I assume everyone’s office has a fridge for the same reason, so these sweet magnets will remind them to keep pushing through for the kitties when times get hard. A hamburger and cat cosmic themed mug can be their constant companion (and maybe if it’s that kind of office, this flask can be too).

Cats: The Musical

Sometimes, your cat-loving friend is also your Andrew Lloyd Webber-loving friend and there’s a gift that was made for them. Now’s the perfect time to remind them of all of the memories you all have together and get nostalgic with the creepiest musical you’ve ever seen performed at a public high school. If you’re rolling in dough, you could also just buy them tickets to see it on Broadway. I’m not really sure if that’s a good gift or what; but trust your heart. Also maybe get them the cast recording so they can play it loudly on their road trip to NYC; Cats makes for great driving company, unlike the actual animals. I’d suggest this more as a gag gift more than something serious, but you know your friends better than me. Maybe this is exactly what they want.