Feline frenzy: could cats swing the US election?

From JD Vance's childless cat ladies' comment to the sign-off in Taylor Swift's endorsement of Kamala Harris, kitties are front and centre in this campaign. Will cat-lovers help win it for the Democrats?

Take a shot at a cat, and you'd better not miss. It all started in 2021, with a remark by JD Vance, long before he became the Republicans' vice-presidential candidate. To be fair to the guy, Vance lives in a low-consequence universe, where you can hate Trump one minute and love him the next, with no ding to your credibility, so he must have been gobsmacked in July when he was called on this historic remark.

It's just a basic fact," he had told Tucker Carlson back in 2021. You look at Kamala Harris, [transportation secretary] Pete Buttigieg, AOC [congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] - the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it?" This elision of parenthood and long-termism is the acceptable face of the childlessness taboo in politics: you can call it dumb, but you can't call it misogynistic, since it isn't gendered.