Churchill and Roosevelt Loved Cats. Hitler and Napoleon Hated Them.

The title is a sentence from Tom Cox’s book “The Good The Bad and The Furry“.  Tom Cox likes cats and lives with cats. He also writes in his book:

..people who hated cats were often control freaks who think the world owed them a living. People who expected other people to be eager and compliant, no matter how poorly they treated them.

Tom Cox has also written a recent article for the Guardian in which he describes how a series of stray ginger cats have come to his home. They always seem to be ginger. I wonder if there are more ginger stray cats in England than other coat colours. Or perhaps it is that ginger strays have the character and intellectual strength to enter his house and take his food. It takes guts to do that and gingers are leaders, it is said.

One of the ginger strays, he named “Alan” with nicknames: Mister Man, Little Sod, Alan Balls. Alan was a good eater! He ended up being adopted by Tom Cox’s neighbours. I have taken the liberty of publishing Tom’s photo of Alan here in return for a link to his blog.

Alan ginger tabby stray cat
Alan
Two useful tags. Click either to see the articles: Toxic to cats | Dangers to cats

What about Churchill, Roosevelt, Hitler and Napoleon?

Churchill

His secretary, Grace Hamblin, writes that he loved cats:

He loved cats. So do I and he knew it. He always had a cat, if not two.

Roosevelt

The Roosevelt family kept a menagerie of pets including two cats: Tom Quartz and Slippers. I think a more accurate statement would be that Roosevelt loved animals or at least his family did.

Hitler

The general view is that Hitler despised cats. He preferred dogs. His German Shepherd “Blondi” is well known. There is a humorous website that takes the mickey about of Hitler based on cats that look like him.

Napoleon

He was an ailurophobe. He feared cats and hated them because of that, it seems to me.

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7 thoughts on “Churchill and Roosevelt Loved Cats. Hitler and Napoleon Hated Them.”

  1. “People who expected other people to be eager and compliant, no matter how poorly they treated them.”

    Wow. Sounds like some of the cat-hating trolls I’ve seen here and elsewhere online. Busted!

    Reply
  2. Cat lovers like themselves, whereas exclusively dog lovers need to have their self worth and importance reaffirmed constantly. Probably there are more cat haters, the dangerous ones that go around trapping or poisoning them, and karma a la Middle Ages plague occurs after the fact. It is our treatment of cats that gauge more accurately how civilized we’ve become.

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  3. Tom Cox describes cat haters exactly!

    ‘People who hated cats were often control freaks who think the world owed them a living. People who expected other people to be eager and compliant, no matter how poorly they treated them’

    They ARE control freaks who try to bully cat lovers into hating cats like they do! We see it all the time with biased statistics about cats killing birds etc. They will try anything to blacken the cats character! I think in reality they know that cats are far more intelligent than they themselves will ever be and that frightens them.

    Harvey you are right, dogs are slobbering lackeys and if one jumps at you and scrabbles with its claws the owner expects you to pet the animal. Imagine if a cat jumped up on one of them, it would be ‘OUCH GET THAT CAT OFF ME’

    Dogs can do damage with their claws but it’s unthinkable to people to declaw them!

    Not all dog owners are cat haters of course and I love dogs as I love all animals but I wouldn’t want one around the house, cats are far superior lol

    Reply
    • Very wise words indeed Rudolph. Dominance and obedience (of others) go together and the dog is obedient. So, it does seem that control freaks (people who want to get their own way and therefore dominate) are going to be people who don’t like cats and prefer dogs.

      Reply
  4. That puts the situation neatly together. I have always suspected that dog people need to feel they are in control at least in control of their dog and that gives them a feeling of power or importance. They may be an absolute nothing anywhere else but they have a slobbering lackey at their command. I also believe that many dog owners use their dog like some kind of weapon. They themselves cannot threaten or menace other people but their dog will and they can get a further rush from seeing that person showing fear and a sense of power from telling the dog “down”, “no Fido”. etc.
    Frankly I do not see any positive side to dog owners. I hope somebody can come up with some.

    Reply

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