It’s pretty well known that the great Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969) hated cats. During his occupancy of the White House as the president of the USA (1953-1961) it is said that “he hated cats so much that he instructed his staff to shoot on sight any they spotted in the grounds”. The quote comes from Dr. Desmond Morris in his book Cat World.
Not only did he hate cats he appears to have been cruel to them having heard that. The logical question is why was he so full of hatred for the domestic cat?
You can search the Internet for an answer but you won’t find one in my opinion until now. When this article is published which will be in about one hour’s time, there will be an answer to the question: “Why did Dwight Eisenhower hate cats?”
Common sense encourages me to believe that if a person hates cats, they probably developed their hatred during their more formative years i.e. when they were a child.
And during those years a child is very much under the influence of their parents and the sort of lifestyle that their parents have created.
The National Park Service have an article about Dwight Eisenhower as does Wikipedia of course and both state that he was born into a large family with a strong religious background and importantly his mother became a Jehovah’s Witness.
This is where I’ll make a suggestion which I think is reasonable. The Jehovah’s Witness website asks a rhetorical question namely, “Should Jehovah Witnesses have cats?”
The author makes it quite clear that Jehovah Witnesses should not have cats. They start their article with the words “There are numerous reasons why a loyal dedicated servant of God should use his Bible-trained conscience to arrive at a proper understanding of why cats are not advisable as pets or companions for Christians.”
One reason is that cats are a bad influence according to this Jehovah’s witness. They argue that cats had an influence upon the ancient Egyptians who idolised them as gods. So, they perceive the domestic cat as having a negative influence upon people to the point where they idolise false gods and therefore, they should not be around people.
It seems that they regard cats as invoking “spiritual contamination”. The author states that we should “guard ourselves from idols” and worship no other gods. Such feline influence could lead to idolatry and thereby grieve Jehovah’s spirit with tragic consequences.”
There, I would argue, we have a very good reason why Dwight Eisenhower hated cats. It seems reasonable to suggest that his mother, became a devout Jehovah’s Witness and in doing so developed a disliking for domestic cats, perhaps a hatred and indoctrinated her son with her attitude.
Don’t forget that before she became a Jehovah’s Witness, she was already deeply religious and therefore, I would suggest, she was prone to literal interpretations of old Scriptures which leads one to distorted viewpoints.
Finally, Jehovah’s Witnesses argue that the apostles did not have domestic cats. And neither did Jesus. In fact, they state that “any human bearing God’s favour” did not keep a domestic cat. They argue that because of that there must be a reason and the reason is that they didn’t want to be like the pagan contemporaries of their day “who showed no regard for how God feels about owning a cat.”
The arguments are very tenuous but I think here we have the reason why the five-star general Dwight Eisenhower hated cats.
P.S., The Bible does not mention cats other than the lion. I have an article on that. There were domestic cats in those days. I just that the authors of the Bible didn’t see any reason to mention cats. This would undermine the arguments mentioned.
Below are some articles on cat haters.
