Victorian Animal Welfare: Don't Leave Your Cats to Starve

In this series of blog posts about attitudes to cats in the 19^th century, this week we look at cat welfare...but all is not as it seems .

The ideal pet cat was passive and well-behaved,
just like their female owner

Victorian (male-dominated) society regarded cats as the embodiment of femininity – and this wasn’t meant as a compliment. Cats were seen as promiscuous, innately sexual, and too independent for their own good and only made good pets if they were less…well…cat-like.

In the 19^th century men expected their wives to be obedient, chaste, and biddable. The message was clear: women needed firmly keeping in line,  or much like any untrustworthy creature their morals might degenerate to those of an alley cat.

By the end of the 19^th century it was estimated most households owned at least one cat, but these were working animals. They lived outdoors, and allowed in during the day to catch mice and keep vermin down. However, there were a significant number of middle class women who kept a pet cat. This was acceptable if the pet was well behaved, because it exemplified the triumph of civilization over baser nature; woman over cat, man over woman.

The problem then arose as to what happened to that pet cat when the household went on holiday. Frequently the answer was to turn the cat out onto the street for the duration of the time the owner was away. However, by the 1880s there was a ground swell of opinion, given voice by the newspapers and pet-keeping manuals, against this practice.

“Don’t leave your cats to starve while you go for an enjoyable holiday.”

On the face of it, this would seem to be the birth pangs of animal welfare concerns for our feline friends. But when you delve deeper it seems the appeal was not made for the reason you might suppose (i.e. the poor animal suffering through lack of food)

The motivation behind this appeal was that a cat forced onto the streets, without the civilizing influence of man, would revert to their bestial habits. This wasn’t a case of chastising owners for abandoning their pets, but shining a light on the weak moral nature of cats, as proven when they reverted to natural behavior.

Stray cats were regarded as the equivalent of prostitutes, while a pet cat was equivalent to a good housewife. To turn one (the wife) into the other (a prostitute) was what the protests objected to – not because they were worried about cat welfare, but because of the example it to women.

Female cat owners were often stereotyped

A cat left to fend for themselves, was “corrupted by their own impulses” (presumably to eat and reproduce) and the degraded animal was no longer a suitable companion for a gentlewoman.

So there we have it: “Don’t leave your cat to starve”…but because 19^th century men feared it might corrupt their wives.

Next week: The Suffragettes and Cats. As a taster, what do you make of the imagery in the postcard show below? Do share your thoughts and leave a comment. 

Victorian Snobbery about Cats as Pets

Last week I asked if you own an iPhone. This week my question is: Do you drive a Skoda or a Ferrari?

The reason is to illustrate how the Victorian’s could be very sniffy about cat-ownership. If we think of this snobbery in terms of cars (rather than cats – See what I did there), those people who own and drive a luxury brand such as Ferrari or Porsche, wouldn’t be seen dead anyway near a humble Skoda. Likewise, you may form a very different mental picture of a stranger based on the vehicle they drive. Thus was also the case for pet ownership in the 19^th century.

The Victorian’s jumped to a lot of conclusion about your status and importance, based on the pets you kept. When it comes to our feline friends the very attributes that made them ideal pets in the middle ages made them less acceptable in the 19^th century. Quite simply, the idea that cats caught mice gave them the mantle of a “poor man’s pet”.

A lot of responsibility was placed on the furry (or feathered) shoulders of a Victorian pet. For a start, an animal that was welcomed into the home was expected to ditch their “beastly” attributes and become civilized. Indeed, the pet’s behavior reflected on the morals of the owner, so the independent nature of cats, plus their propensity to roam and find boyfriends, made them far too base and lascivious for Victorian tastes.

Louis Wain's "The Bachelor Party" - Cats behaving badly

Indeed, dogs were thought to show masculine qualities (and were therefore superior) such as heroism and loyalty, whereas cats exhibited inferior female tendencies such as perfidy and sexual inconsistency. In fact, in the early 20^th century militant suffragettes sought to dissociate the link between women and cats in order to get men to take them more seriously.

Anyhow, I digress. Most pet cats were expected to catch mice, and to encourage this cats were often kept hungry.

“…the cruel mistake of supposing that a cat will be a keener and better mouser if not sufficiently fed.”

However, there were some people who kept cats and were proud of it. But if they decided to sell the cat, for whatever reason, they tended to stress their practical qualities.

“Angora cats. Several very handsome ones, splendid mousers.”

So whilst the Angora was a rare and expensive breed, it was still thought best to point out their hunting prowess. Indeed, the breeding of pedigree cats was considered second rate compared to that of dogs, and ranked alongside breeding rabbits, guinea pigs and other pets of the working man.

It took the founding of the National Cat Club in 1887 for the social status of cats to see an upward swing. However, in part this was done by arranging working men’s cats to be exhibited in a separate class, as if to emphasize the difference between cats belonging to the less affluent and those of the middle or upper classes! Evidently this was a sort of social segregation for cats, or a feline apartite, the like of which would hopefully never see the light of day in the modern age.