The Victorians switched witches for old-maid stereotypes – for single women without children: “Old maids and cats have long been proverbially associated together, and, rightly or wrongly, these creatures have been looked upon with a certain degree of suspicion and aversion by a large proportion of the human race,” wrote a journalist in the Dundee Courier in 1880. Short sentences or facts illustrated (in a style i didn’t like much, only because of personal art preferences) representing cat lady personality, characters, attitude, etc. This tiny critter infects rats and mice and changes their behaviour by, scientists believe, creating an attraction to cat urine, so it can wind up in the stomach of a cat, where it reproduces. After the kittens have eaten, Maria is telling them a story about the Cardinal Mezzaluna who’s sends the cats food. This maybe true, as Maria uses her abilities to cast a spell for a dying man, to see if the woman he has always loved, loved him too.

I believe in embracing my weird, and the fact that I have two cats and would happily take in more if mine weren't homicidal little sociopaths is not something I'm particularly ashamed of. Still a good book that cat lovers, or people who knows one (so mostly everybody) will enjoy and laugh while reading.For all ebook purchases, you will be prompted to create an account or login with your existing HarperCollins username and password. I thought it was a really creative story, both with the relationship between the woman and the cats, and the quest they go on to fulfill the Cardinal’s wish. But perhaps the moment the crazy cat lady motif truly jumped the shark was with the song Buttload of Cats on an episode of the television series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend earlier this year. Although the 18th century saw people beginning to question superstitions – such as the belief that a woman’s wart was a teat suckled by Satan – negative connotations of the relationship between cats and women remained. Also, there are more than a million cats euthanised each year so if women (and men) are afraid to adopt because of negative stereotypes it definitely hurts cats in the long run.

When you’re a permanent bachelorette / It’s mandatory that you go out and get / A buttload of cats / Oh, yeah! Scientists are exploring evidence that toxoplasmosis could create behavioural changes in people, leading to lots of excited articles wondering if the parasite is a clue to explaining the phenomenon of “crazy cat lady”.Loonstra (a regular Flow illustrator), Crazy Cat Lady is a celebration of the quirky, relatable, and instantly recognizable habits of devoted feline fans. The inception of the “crazy” moniker is harder to pin down, but its connotations of hysteria are an old gender stereotype. She tells Bast and the kits that kindly Cardinal Mezzaluna, who makes sure the cats get fed, had a mission for the Cat Lady, which also shows that he accepts her abilities. With simplicity and emotion the author weaves the tale of this old woman who takes care of the homeless and wandering cats of Rome, many of which I saw on a holiday to Rome two years ago.

Over the last few years, there have been multivalent efforts to debunk the crazy cat lady stereotype and project a positive view of women and their cats. Although, in recent pop culture, cat lady has evolved into shorthand for a lonely, sad, sexless woman. It has long been a pejorative term and a device for transferring shame and judgment on women who challenged traditional roles, or were hard to domesticate and keep in line.Quite simply this is a short, beautiful book of poetry, especially appealing to the cat lover no doubt. To understand why this trope exists – and why it may be on its last legs – let’s scoot back to the middle ages and the earliest perceptions of women and their cats.

There are, on thirty-one pages, connected verses of (almost always) eight lines each, with rhyme scheme AABBCCDD. While dogs are faithful and friendly, cats are cool, detached and unreliable … cats are as hard to understand as women are,” he said. Once a dowdy, eccentric figure with at least a dozen cats shedding hair on every available surface, today she’s a hip-at-any-age woman who knows an unassailable truth: Cats are awesome! Fresh, funny and for anyone who’s ever felt astray, CAT LADY will help you belong – because a woman always lands on her feet. Even before witch-hunts, cats had a bad rep in the western world – with associations with heretical sects and the devil.The book Cat Lady Chic (2012) offered elegant images of cat-owners Audrey Hepburn, Georgia O’Keeffe, Diana Ross and Zelda Fitzgerald as an antidote to the Eleanor Abernathy archetype. The crazy cat lady is a common, recognisable trope in contemporary culture: think of Eleanor Abernathy in The Simpsons. Ebooks fulfilled through Glose cannot be printed, downloaded as PDF, or read in other digital readers (like Kindle or Nook). He confesses that he loved a woman, Anne Marie, but due to his vows, they swore to part and never see each other again in this life. CatCon Worldwide, a new conference celebrating cat culture, has, as its core value, the desire to “change the negative perception of the crazy cat lady and prove that it is possible to be hip, stylish, and have a cat”.