Of cat women and dog men

I’ll never forget the taxi driver who, after apparently enjoying a half hour conversation with me (and taking half the fee I had earned singing in the West End all evening in an extortionate fare back to Hackney), snidely enquired as to how many cats I had.

He hit me with it as I was standing by his window shuffling money to give him. It was a deliberate put-down, and it did what it was designed to do; it chagrined me, and shut me up. In that instant, I realised that the interesting conversation I’d thought I had been having with this chap had all been a farce. He’d been humouring me. Waiting to pick his moment to slap me down. I’d been enjoying chatting and winding down after a show. He’d been judging me and marking me down as an unacceptable female.

In that instant, I realised that on the comedown from the gig (and any performer will tell you that can take hours), I had probably talked too much. For a woman anyway. Women aren’t supposed to talk too much about too many things. I had knowledge of and an opinion on a variety of topics from politics to plants. I just had to be single. I must have cats. Possibly 7 or more of them. Despite the slick cocktail dress, my flat probably stank of cat piss.

He was a dog man.

I am a cat woman.

I mean that literally. I believe that half the human race are cat people, and half are dog people. I’m not referring just to furry beast preference. What I mean is that half the world behave like cats, and the other half dog their way through life.

We all know that enthusiastic person who’s up with the lark, always busy, always up for fun times, park, picnics, games, sports, going out. They like cuddling on the sofa with you too, and kissing and holding hands, and big suffocating bear hugs when they see you, and they get quite hurt if you wriggle within their clutches. They’ll get all pouty if you don’t return their emails or their ‘phone calls straightaway too.

Then there are people who are perfectly happy to see you when they see you, but they get on with their lives just fine when you’re not there. They’ll give great advice if you’re worried about stuff. They’ll take you to the doctor if you need a ride, and they’re great company on the rare occasions they find the time to see you, but the rest of the time, you can be forgiven for wondering if they’ve died.

It’s nothing personal.

Any more than it is with cats.

Thing is, though, what sneering men like my cab driver don’t seem to realise is that a cat woman - whether or not she actually rooms with a cat, is very possibly a woman who isn’t going to be a clinging vine. She won’t expect him until she sees him coming, and she won’t hang on to his coat tails when he wants to leave. A cat woman isn’t likely to be needy. She may love, but she’ll give space, too.

Men who make ‘cat lady’ jibes inevitably also seem to like to bang on about their damned independence. They fight marriage and babies and all the things they think women want from them, but they run a mile from women who choose companionship with a species of animal that one actually has to be pretty adjusted to live with.

What they fail to realise is that a woman who can go without docility, devotion, face-licking, jumping up, and someone trotting after her, probably won’t need it from them, either.

Maybe that’s the problem though. Maybe that’s actually what men who sneer and jeer at women who love and behave like cats are actually worried about. That they won’t be needed. That if a woman loves, but doesn’t need them, that she might stray, and move on to not needing someone else.

For my part, I have to admit that it’s a complete and utter deal breaker if a man says he “hates” cats. It concerns me when someone cannot appreciate an independent creature that doesn’t bolster their ego and do what they want it to do.

As far as I am concerned, it bodes ill for their expectations of me, and I worry that I am only going to let them down and disappoint them. 
 

"Unhand me, woman..." Me and Tigs, Regent's Park, c.1982
(Pic: Gerald Blake)

“So ‘ow many cats you got, then?” (arf arf).

Pause.

“Actually none right now. £32.50 wasn’t it? Here you go.”

“Wot, no tip...?”

Not unless you sit up and beg for it, Rover…

Night night.

© Emmeline Wyndham - 2018

"Dogs, dogs, and more dogs, and far too many rooms..."

('Orlando', Virginia Woolf, 1928, Hogarth Press)

 

“Here. Pick one.” Said my gentleman friend, flicking a card over the desk at me.

I had arrived for my regular weekend fix of coffee, cats, and newspapers. His house reminds me of the Ambassadorial London flat in which I grew up. I feel ‘at home’ with the cracks in the ceilings, the occasional dodgy floorboard, the wallpaper peeling a bit here and there. I’m even strangely fond of the Crittall windows that let in howling draughts. My home though, built in 1880, had massive wooden sash windows with huge weights inside the frames. When the rope in one of them broke, I remember rescuing the weight and dragging it around after me pretending it was a dachshund. I called it ‘Bozo’. We were inseparable. The window never did get fixed. We wedged it open with a brick.

I picked up the card and turned it over. He had apparently ‘won’ a subscription to one of a selection of four magazines, but didn’t fancy any of them. Thought he’d leave it to me to choose.

The choice was depressing. Fashion or Gardening. Nothing on aeroplanes or archaeology that would have delighted us both. Sighing, I picked one of those monthly glossies that was all about how to live in the English countryside.

“Yes” he agreed. “It’s probably going to be the least offensive.”

Famous last words.

When the first edition arrived, he had left it in its wrapper for me so I could have the excitement of being the first to view what we assumed were going to be articles on dry stone walling, coppicing, conservation, rural political issues, and the best footwear for staying upright in mud. What we found were page after page of adverts for weird granite-topped kitchen ‘island’ units (“What’s that even FOR? Not as if you can sit at the damned thing...”), obscenely priced copper ‘farm worker’ bath tubs stuck in the middle of bathrooms with billowing muslin curtains in the background, and article after article featuring the ‘work’ of yummy mummies making dollies and doylies, pottery, whimsical paintings, and carving ‘decorative’ wooden things in converted milking sheds.

All this industry went on, we noted, while the children were away at boarding school, and hubby was away all week in London, working to pay for it all.

It was a powerful emetic, but the thing that struck me most overall however, was the fashion for grey. 50 Shades of. Everywhere. Walls, floors, carpets. To top it all off, there was usually an arrangement of large stones featured in the middle of a table or something. The smarter the country residence, the more likely it had been painted to resemble the interior of a 19^th century institution.

As masochism took hold, I started snooping on Zoopla for houses in my area for around the £2million mark. The sellers had all been reading the mag too, it seemed. No matter how elegant the exterior, how noble, Georgian, or ‘character’, the interiors all looked exactly the same. Viciously ‘clean’ lines, savagely smooth surfaces, chrome, glass, skylights, brushed metal floor lamps, ceiling spot lighting. I found myself wondering why, if someone wanted a modern home, they didn’t just buy one, or have one built. I also found myself dreaming of a massive Lottery win so I could buy just one of these beautiful properties, rip everything out, and return it to its former gracious glory.

So inviting on a cold winter's day...

Yet, for a few months, I’ll admit we did continue to enjoy jeering at this magazine together. It was a bonding experience. I would find it in its wrapper every time. I liked to think my marvellously indulgent gentleman friend was indulging what he realised was my fondness for rending and tearing (first witnessed when he handed me a knife to pierce the film on a microwave meal). The reality was of course, that he just wasn’t interested. I made sure I read bits out to him though. I wasn’t going to keep the experience all to myself. Especially the icky, fake, ‘romance’ column.

This was a monthly glimpse into the world of a fictional country widow, looking for love among the hay bales. It was suitably ‘ditsy’, and frightfully middle class. One somehow couldn’t imagine our heroine copping off with a terrier man or a poacher. Game-Keeper or MFH, maybe.

At one point, this fictional Country Calamity Kate fixated on a new neighbour. Her stalking antics were terrifying. I rewrote the piece from his point of view and sent it to the editor. It was not favoured with publication.

Not even an acknowledgement come to think of it. Whoever was writing these giggly 1000 words every month was undoubtedly one of the Ed’s chums. They probably made jam together.

Nothing if not loyal, these ‘country’ folk…

© Emmeline Wyndham - 2018

Let there be (dipped) light...

I don’t know who it was who came up with the idea of ‘aggressive styling’ for motor cars, but whoever it was, I can only assume that they had very small private parts.

Slanted ever-blazing headlamps made to look like angry ‘eyes’, and vicious ‘bared teeth’ grilles may now be seen in rear-view mirrors roaring up back-bumpers world-wide, and frankly, these vehicles make me want to put on my hazards, stop my car, get out, and punch them right in their grim grilles with a brick. ‘Aggressive styling’ certainly produces aggression in me.

Has anyone in the motor industry, and indeed, in Parliament, stopped to think how much unnecessary stress these modern cars produce in other drivers when they’re being tail-gated by one? How these cars seem to produce in their drivers a sense of righteous invincibility that may, quite possibly, make a significant contribution to the exponential rise of road-rage and frankly atrocious modern driving? I know I feel a mounting sense of danger, panic, and fear when I am observing the speed limit and one of these things roars up behind to ‘challenge’ me. It angers me because under unnecessary stress, people can make mistakes, and I don’t want to be pushed into errors in my driving because someone with poor taste and money to burn has bought a death machine with which to intimidate anyone who crosses their path. 
 

Beastly. The Lexus LC 500

With their headlamps blazing up your bum, you can’t see the human behind the wheel; just this angry monster trying to push you off the road. That’s the kind of stress nobody needs, and certainly not when they’re operating dangerous machinery.

These cars seem to tell their owners “you don’t need to observe the speed limit – that’s for pussies like the woman in front”. I live in the English countryside. The countryside is different. There are different factors involved than those seen in car adverts with their long, straight, empty roads. Here, you get tractors with heavy muck loads bumbling and swaying along at 35mph on 60mph roads. It’s not up for debate. You pass when it’s safe to do so, or if they obligingly pull over for you. End of. Driving your vicious-looking car up my arse isn’t going to make the vehicle in front of me go any faster.

On the industrial estate where I work there are high, unavoidable speed humps in the road. Due to financial constraints, I have an older car, so I go very slowly over them. I am not going to destroy my suspension just because someone in some indestructible tank less than 2 years old wants to steeplechase over them. Only last week, I was negotiating one of these when I realised that the boy in the car behind me was literally an inch from my bumper and not even looking ahead as he very nearly rammed right into me. He was gazing out of his side window, bored, impatient. When he finally looked around, I had to mouth “BACK. OFF” in my rear-view mirror at him. He gave me the finger. Well, he could. He was in a shiny big new car. As far as he was concerned, I had no right to be on the road in a ten year old Ford.

New car discrimination against older car is a thing. Older car driven by middle-aged woman and the needle is in the red.

And yet, there I was only the other day, gently and steadily steering my old girl through a raging flooded forest ford, only to meet a man in a 4x4 the other side, chewing his fingernails, and nervously trying to judge the situation to see if he could do the same. As I drew up level with him, I rolled down my window and smiled: “Slow and steady. You’ll be fine.” He seemed grateful, if a tad chagrined to be guided by a small woman in a granny wagon. Presumably, his shiny, angry car’s computer wasn’t offering any solutions as to how he could negotiate this one.

I recently heard that headlamps are about to come under government scrutiny. Something to do with the trend for unregulated over-brightness in headlamps. I do hope so. For some time now, car manufacturers seem to have been pushing the ‘necessity’ to be able to see 2 miles down the road ahead of you, and blind oncoming traffic into the ditch.

I hope MPs will also debate ‘aggressive styling’, and its psychological effects, but I suspect that would fall under ‘freedom of choice’. Not just for the consumer, but for motor trade gamer generation designers addicted to anime war comics.

Motoring should be about getting from point A to point B as safely, comfortably, and calmly as possible. For all their labour-saving features, gadgetry, aggressive styling and marketing, modern cars do not promote safety. Quite the opposite, in fact. Steadily rising RTA figures would certainly seem to bear this out.

Slow down, and get a grip. Unless you’re driving an ambulance, no journey is worth anyone’s life.

© Emmeline Wyndham - 2018