What comes to mind when you hear the term “cat lady”? My mind conjures up images of Crazy Cat Lady, a character in The Simpsons. A cat lady should not be confused with Catwoman (Batman’s feline foe and sometimes friend with heavy petting benefits). For National Pet Month in the UK, I’m going to babble about cat ladies and how I came across a real Georgian lady with a fondness for collecting cats.
What is a Cat Lady?
Cat lady is often a derogatory term and stereotype of a middle-aged or elderly spinster or widow who owns or cares for many cats. By the way, a group of cats is known as a clowder.
Females who own cats have long been associated with spinsterhood, widowhood and witchcraft. More recently, the concept of a cat lady has been connected to career-orientated and romantically challenged women (cue eye-roll 🙄).
I’m not a cat lover (except for tigers, I adore those). First, I’m allergic to cats. Second, I’m irritated by their disdainful manners. Okay, I admit it—if I were an animal, I would probably be a cat. But I digress…
I wanted to say that I applaud the modern challenge to the gender-based stereotype. Many celebrities, writers and artists now embrace the term and refer to themselves as animal lovers who enjoy taking care of a clowder of cats.
Mrs Griggs
On one of my many ventures down the rabbit hole of historical research, I came across a very real cat lady from the late eighteenth century.
Mrs Griggs lived on Southampton Row in Bloomsbury, London. She was a spinster with a fortune of £30,000, so very wealthy. When she died in 1792, the executors of her will found 86 living cats and 28 dead cats in her house.
Yeah, a bit grim, but hey, she must have adored her cats. According to The Annual Register, “[that] eccentric lady” hired a servant specifically to handle her “grimalkins”. “The black woman had lived servant to Mrs. Griggs many years, and had a handsome annuity [£150] given her to take care of the cats.” (Georgian London: Into the Streets, Lucy Inglis (2013) p.127)
An illustration of Gay’s fable in W. S. Howitt’s A New Work of Animals (1811) CC by 4.0
While it’s questionable whether Mrs Griggs embodied the values of National Pet Month (the number of dead cats still hanging around hardly espouses responsible pet ownership), I do not doubt that she wanted to ensure the well-being of her beloved pets after her death.
In the UK, while it’s not legally possible to leave a legacy directly to one’s pets, one can leave money in trust to provide for them, as did Mrs Griggs.
Do you know any eccentric tales of pet owners and their legacies? Let me know in the comments.
