My brother had a cat named Priscilla Mullens. We knew part of the story of Priscilla Mullens as children. I’m not sure how much we learned in school and how much was part of the stories we learned from friends. Our family Doctor was Vernon Standish and his family was about the same size as ours with children about the same ages. Jim Standish was in my grade at school. The Standish family claimed to be direct descendants of Captain Miles Standish. It was either from the Standish family or from school that we came into contact with the prom by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called “The Courtship of Miles Standish.” According to the poem, Standish asked his good friend John Alden to propose to Priscilla on his behalf, to which Priscilla responded, “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?”

We learned a bit about the various pilgrims who traveled to Massachusetts aboard the Mayflower, but our stories were always a bit incomplete. We learned that Priscilla was a teenager on the Mayflower and the only survivor of her family of the first winter in Plymouth. In the stories we were told she was the only woman of marriageable age in the colony. Captain Miles Standish, the military advisor of the colony was widowed. Standish’s friend, John Alden was also single. Two men and one woman was the scenario of Longfellow’s poem, but we knew that somehow Standish had succeeded in finding a wife after having been widowed because we knew people who claimed to be the descendants of Standish. They did have the same last name.

I think the poem, and probably the history we were taught in school were a bit romanticized. According to historical records, The Alden-Mullens marriage was probably the third wedding in Plymouth Colony.

History, legend, and poetry aside, the cat Priscilla Mullens was known to have several male suitors and was a prolific producer of kittens. My father used to stay that there are three stages with kittens. Stage one is when he puts a sign up in the feed warehouse that says, “Free kitten with the purchase of a bag of cat food.” Stage two is when the sign is changed to, “Free bag of cat food if you take a kitten.” Stage three is when there is no sign and he says to a customer, “I’ve loaded your feed into the trunk of your car. Be sure to open the trunk when you get home.”

Veteranary care of pets was a bit different in those days. There wasn’t as much information about spaying and neutering pets. And people in our town didn’t routinely have pet cats vaccinated. The wisdom was that if a cat survived distemper it wouldn’t ever get the disease again in its life. I don’t know if Priscilla ever had distemper, but she seemed to remain healthy while a number of her kittens succumbed to the disease.

I didn’t get along with Priscilla at all. The cat was rather mean to me. Once when I was wrestling with my brother the cat landed on my back with all of its claws out and proceeded to bite me drawing blood from several locations. In our family my brother was the keeper of cats while I preferred dogs.

Our daughter, however, changed my attitude towards animals. She was a lover of cats and kittens and claimed that some of the cats that she brought into our home had adopted her at the shelter. I grew fond of all of the cats she had as pets as she was growing up. I rather enjoyed having a cat on my lap as i read a book in the evening.

These days, however, we don’t have any cats in our family. Both of our children have had pet dogs as adults. Our daughter-in-law has wanted to have a cat around the farm and made an attempt to adopt a couple of cats, but they left the farm as soon as they were allowed to range free from their carrier in the barn. I have been planning to adopt a couple of shelter cats and keep them in he shop at the farm, but I have yet to make those arrangements.

So, I guess as far as politics go, our family is not childless and we do not have cats. However, I think you might count me as a fan of cats and the people who care for them. And since the slur, “childless cat ladies” has been applied to people of both female and male genders, I guess I might fall into that category. At least I can’t see any problem with having cats in the family.

Ours isn’t the only country where cats are making political headlines. In Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, people are angry about a proposed law that would require cat owners to purchase an annual license and provide proof of vaccination for their pets. The law also would require cat owners to confine cats in heat. Opponents of the proposed law suggest that the proposal is simply another example of imposing taxes and claim that it would be unenforceable because most of the cats are stray or feral. They suggest that cats can’t really be owned and as to confining them when they are in heat, the noise would certainly cause problems with the neighbors.

Cats and humans have lived in close proximity for a long time. Cats were domesticated in ancient Egypt 10,000 years ago. In Egyptian mythology Bastet is a half-cat, half-human goddess of fertility and childbirth. In Greek mythology the goddess is Artemis and Diana in Roman myth. Diana could transform into a cat. In Norse mythology, Freyja, the goddess of fertility rode on a chariot led by two cats. Cats and cat ladies continue to be part of popular culture. Catwoman is a major character in Batman movies. In the LEGO movie Mrs Scratchen-Post is the owner of 20 cats. 20 years ago Robert DeNiro was featured as a cat lady in a Saturday Night Live performance.

It remains to be seen what role cats will play in the 2024 US Presidential election, but in my experience, attacking cats and the people who care for them is not a good move. One thing I learned from Priscilla Mullens is that if you mess with a cat owner you’ll end up bloody with wounds to nurse.