By David Futrelle
The lady-hating wannabe ladykillers who call themselves Red Pillers love to trash talk cats and those who love them, forever “warning” feminists that if they don’t change their ways, and pronto, they’ll end up living their last years alone, surrounded by cats.
Dudes, I hate to break it to you, but this is not exactly the cutting insult that you think it is because, well, have you seen cats?
Sure, they’re little agents of chaos that leave tiny trails of destruction in their wake, but they are also some of the most delightful creatures on our green earth. Seriously, dudes, go watch some cat videos on Youtube and tell me with a straight face that being surrounded by cats is somehow a bad thing.
Thing is, beneath the disdain that so many Red Pillers profess to feel for cats you will often find a deep, if not very well-hidden, undercurrent of jealousy. How is it that these weird, furry, self-absorbed brats — I mean cats, not Red Pillers — have won the hearts of women (and men) around the world without even trying?
Some Red Pillers are convinced they have the answer: Because cats are assholes.
In one thread in the Red Pill subreddit from a couple of years ago, one enterprising fellow known as poopin urged his fellow alpha male wannabes to “Have the personality of cats. Bitches love cats.”
“I have always hated cats personalities and wondered why so many girls were so attracted to cats,” poopin wrote.
Cats treat you like shit, are mostly unaffectionate, and are assholes. Yet a LOT of girls love cats. You never hear of cat guys (as opposed to cat ladies).
I have always wondered why girls are attracted to an asshole pet. The Red Pill has made it all clear to me.
He then posted a long list of cat traits, real and imagined, that in his mind make them the ultimate alphas. Cats, he assured his fellow Red Pillers, are
*Cute
*Aloof
*Independent.
*Want affection(rare) on their own terms …
*You serve ME, I do not serve you attitude. …
*I do what I want. …
*Indifference mildly peppered with punctuated affection (to keep interest).
*The only interaction you get is when you play with me (sex)
A note of caution: If you think that sex and playing with cats are basically interchangeable activities, chances are good that you’re doing at least one of these things very, very wrong — unless your (human) partner has, say, a fetish for batting at dangly things.
Poopin is hardly the only Red Piller to suggest that his fellows emulate the “aloof” behavior of cats. “If you want to be more alpha, strive to act like a cat not a dog,” wrote one of his colleagues in a post last year. ” Commenter torodinson agreed:
You ever try to pet a friend cat you just met? They will likely avoid you like the woman and the thirsty beta. But if you ignore a cat they well need your attention like the woman and the independent alpha.
In a thread from last week, someone called Porespellar declared that
Cats are masters of holding frame
Cats rarely break frame. You can yell at them, threaten them, etc and all you’ll get is a bemused stare back at you. We can learn from this.
As something of a cat enthusiast I have to say that Red Pillers understand cats about as well as they understand everything else — which is not very well at all.
Yes, cats can be assholes. They more or less do what the hell they want, even when they know full well we don’t want them to do it.
But cats are hardly the aloof, indifferent creatures Red Pillers — and a lot of people who don’t actually own cats themselves — think they are. Red Pillers think cats are all like this:
What they don’t seem to understand is that cats are also like this:
Yes, cats can seem pretty aloof to people they don’t know or like, but sometimes their seeming aloofness isn’t the result of indifference but of their social anxiety. Many cats that are notoriously standoffish with guests can be endlessly and often ridiculously affectionate with their owners and other trusted humans, and not just because they want to mark “their” people with their scent. One of my cats insists on curling up in my arms like a (human) baby multiple times a day for as long as my arms (or my patience) can stand it, while the other stares at me affronted like a jilted lover in a Mexican Telenovela.
Cats also have a number of other habits, some deeply weird, that aren’t a good idea to copy if you’re looking to charm your way into someone’s heart, or at least their pants. They like to watch people poop. They sit on your head when you’re trying to sleep. They stick their butts in your face when you’re just trying to watch TV. They walk across your keyboard and sometimes take naps on it. They bring you dead animals as gifts. They sprint around the house at 4 AM for no discernible reason. As the video above demonstrated, some of them just really enjoy knocking things to the floor.
So here’s a thought, Red Pill dudes: Instead of trying to emulate animals, whether gorillas, lobsters, or cats, why not try emulating, I dunno, decent human beings? Play “hard to get” if you want — it’s a time-honored and basically harmless romantic trick of the trade — but don’t fetishize aloofness or turn it into a lifestyle.
There is, however, one thing about cats that some Red Pill pickup artists would do well to emulate. Cats are pretty good about cleaning their own asses without making a fuss about it. Just something to think about, Roosh V.
Hello.
It seems that Linda Brown deceased. May she rest in peace.
Have a nice day.
Thank you for this inclusive disclaimer.
@ dvaghundpossen
This is quite a light hearted thread, so I’ll try not to get too ranty; but that is one of my big berserk buttons. There’s nothing more heart breaking, or rage inducing, than when you see an abused child or animal desperately seeking affection from an abuser. It’s that thing where you know they’re thinking ‘what did I do wrong, how do I make you love me?’.
I just want to say to them “this is not your fault, you did nothing to deserve this”.
Sorry, rant over.
Now imagine red pillers trying to be cute to “score”.
@Moggie
Yep.
@B. dakry
The loss of a companion animal can hurt deeply. I know this from experience, and it is my hope that my cats are still hangin’ out together in the afterlife.
@Dvarghundspossen (you’ll have to visualize the umlaut)
Abso-effin’-lutely.
It’s a strategy for survival. Sometimes you do what has to be done.
@Alan
Once again, you said it very, very well.
@Makroth
Hell, yeah! I don’t consider myself incredibly successful (not yet) — but at least I’m in the game pitching, instead of on the sidelines shouting insults and slurs at the players. I wear glasses, eat kale every day, and moisturize religiously — and I’m definitely more alpha than they are!
Awww! One of my cats — the MOST scaredy-cat cat I’ve ever had — loves to sleep in my arms like a baby too. He’s terrified of anyone else, including the neighbor who may be out in his driveway just outside our bedroom window, whereupon my cat acts like he’s a wanted man and hides.
Oh, one more thing to add to the Do Not Do list for guys who think it’s wise to act like cats to attract girls: Do not race around the house like a maniac after having gone poop. It’s just annoying when the cat does it; I cannot begin to imagine a guy doing it.
My cat was quite stupid, due to malnutrition as a kitten. Never figuring out how to open doors or even push the lid of is food bowl. When an acquaintance of my parents rescued him out of a abandoned car he was severely dehydrated.
He was very small and very light for a tomcat, weighing in at 3.5 kg at the heaviest.
He loved to play fur stole with me. And sleep between someone’s legs at night.
We had to put him down a few years ago at age 20, when after several strokes his heart started failing.
I still miss him.
Used to puzzle me when people made statements like that about cats, until realised that for many the default domestic animal is the dog.
Cats (OK, not all cats) don’t show affection the way dogs (not all dogs) do, and nor do goats, horses and rabbits.
Because all animals are not the same animal, and all species are not the same species.
As a “cat person” (I wash myself with my tongue and defecate in a giant litter tray) I learned most of what I know about cats from cats, especially Olly the Great, the first cat in my life.
The Tribe of Tiger (by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas) is very good too.
My cat died a decade ago. I’ve been living in rented accommodation since, so haven’t got a new one. (In the UK, it’s very common for rental contracts to have no-pet clauses, especially in London.)
I miss having a cat around. The place just feels emptier.
So sorry to hear that EJ. They do leave a big furry shaped hole in your life don’t they? It’s so worth having them in the first place, but it’s heartbreaking when they leave. I miss Sas every day.
… ouch
I spent the weekend in the hinterland at the home of a friend, spent most of it petting Peewee, a self-absorbed tomcat who was abandoned in a farm building several years ago. Peewee was not quite weaned, we think momma cat may have met a bad end, leaving the kittens alone. Peewee is the only one who lived, but at a current bulk of 12 pounds(!!), Peewee isn’t “pee-wee” any more. Cuddling with that cat is most cathartic. I am male, though I consider myself more Wheat and Sorghum male than Alfalfa male. Guess that’s why it works for me.
It’s so hard losing a beloved pet. I lost two dogs (out of four) last year. One was 13 so at least he wasn’t young anymore. Got rapidly advancing kidney failure, there was nothing to do. The other one was just 7. She was born with a deformity of the spine, but she hadn’t suffered from it before.
Then she hurt her knee in a freak accident, so she was gonna have surgery for that. It would be a long and hard rehab, but the prognosis was good. However, while waiting for the knee surgery, she got symptoms from her spine. Nerves had been squeezed, and she lost control of her bladder, and began to lose control of her hind legs too. There was a surgery for this too, but the prognosis for this one was bad. And with both surgeries she’d basically be completely restricted, not allowed to run around at all, for a year, and she was a super energetic dog. So we made the decision to euthanize her. But it was a hard decision.
So we were down to two dogs, from four. Then we got a new dog all of a sudden, because a friend of a friend was dying and urgently needed to find a new home for her dog. So now we’re up to three again! Sometimes life takes odd turns.
It is so heartbreaking to lose them.
We’re down to just one now: Molly Mogg (aka Charming Molly). She’s 9.
I’ve asked this question myself a few times, and I can only think that this is how they justify being an asshole to themselves. In fact, that’s pretty much the whole reason these guys congregate in “communities”: it’s never actually to accomplish anything, it’s to reassure themselves that the reasons they’ve cooked up to treat other people like shit are totally justified.
I was in Cub Scouts for three years from the ages of 8-10 and it was something I always looked forward to back then. Hanging with good buddies, playing dodgeball, building the Kub Kars, planting trees, camping, all the fun stuff with the credo Do Your Best. Scouting was always very big on the Golden Rule (do a good turn for others and treat people the way you want to be treated). Even as all of us grew up into sullen and disaffected teenagers in the late 90s, early 00s, I always kept that credo in the back of my mind and it probably ended up shaping my personal politics more than I realize.
Funny how whenever these guys bring up animals, it’s always in some kind of pathetic justification for social Darwinism and never looking out for each other, helping the sick or the elderly etc. Cubs take the best of the wolf pack, not this erroneous alpha/beta bullshit.
Ah, still got fond memories of the journey up to Arrowhead Park near Huntsville… rockin’ out to Ace of Base in Baloo’s truck. Those were the days….
I was going to ramble about wolves, but it’s probably easier just to stick this here.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/wolf-pack-photo/
OT, but I thought was funny… the family Katamount had to do Easter a week early due to Katabro going to his GFs place in Windsor on the actual long weekend. Katabro’s GF brought over her Clue game (I was bellyaching in previous visits that our games were getting kinda stale).
And it was that 2008 updated Clue: Discover The Secrets version with new cards, where all the characters have new backstories, the rooms are modernized and there are new dumb weapons like the “Trophy”, the “Baseball Bat” and “Poison Pills.”
Evidently, these changes didn’t last long and it reverted back to the old school version, but holy hell… by turning Professor Plum basically into Mark Zuckerberg and Colonel Mustard into Tim Tebow, it just screamed “How do you do, fellow kids?”
I gotta admit though, it was amusing to accuse “Zuck the Cuck of killing Mr. Boddy in the Spa with Poison, which is a total cuck move.” 😛
I mean, it was a nice try introducing some diversity into the stuffy old white stock characters, but if you’re going to change up stock characters, don’t turn the old colonial soldier into a washed-up football player and retain the name. Just doesn’t work.
Interestingly, I just read up on Chinchillas as pets, of all things. Some pros and cons, but really the main thing is setting up the right kind of habitat for them and they can live a really long time, which is nice (12-20 years). I found the fact that they should never be wet interesting (their fur is so dense that it will likely get moldy b4 ever drying, they use dust baths instead).
I was pretty far down the rabbit hole for someone pretty determined to stick to dogs. It just interested me. Apparently their tummies are finicky, but that really means you just stick to basic feed and hay.
And they chew everything. Always.
My current brown tabby boy is so big he can’t clean his own bum, so I have to use a wash cloth and brush to get him all clean.
I still prefer him to any of these RP dudebros. There’s a reason my kitty’s nickname is “Upgrade”.
This. They will also sit on your book, when you’re trying to read it.
My mom nearly kicked out my cat after she brought her a dead rat and left it on her bed.
My mom first washed the sheets and then decided to burn them.
Again true. They make me wonder if they can see shit we can’t.
Also, they like to use humans as furniture and seem to think our lower body is entirely disconnected from the upper half.
My friend had a cat who didn’t like me. I stayed over once and the cat decided to sleep between my thighs. I tried pushing him off because it was summer and I didn’t need his body heat making me uncomfortable, but it kept hissing and swatting at me. As in… asshole, this is my body? If you hate me so much why do you want to sleep on me?
Cats are capable of affection, anxiety, excitement, friendship, loneliness; the full range of emotions we have. They have the same brain structures as we do when it comes to these things, or structures similar enough that we have no reason to believe otherwise.
Dogs are capable of affection, anxiety, excitement, friendship, loneliness; the full range of emotions we have. They have the same brain structures as we do when it comes to these things, or structures similar enough that we have no reason to believe otherwise.
All mammals share these traits. What mammals do not share are configurations of facial muscles and communication methods. They all communicate differently, as species and as individuals.
Everyone knows this to a degree. We can assign emotions to mammals easily, in a way that we don’t to other animals. We can’t really talk about what a fish or insect or crab is feeling in the same way we can with a mammal. (Lizards and birds are lovely edge cases).
It makes me very sad that so many people happily assign these emotions to their animals-of-preference, and go through hoops to not assign them to the rest.
Also, opinion of one here, but I don’t trust guys who say they don’t like cats. Too often it seems a macho thing. Hasn’t done me wrong so far.
My cat is an incredibly chilled out black and white male called Biff. He’s profoundly clever and since we moved into our current abode in 2006 we’ve only been apart longer than 24 hours once when I was rushed to hospital for a few days. He turns 13 next month but is in fine fettle. He is king of the backyard but otherwise he’s usually found fast asleep on the end of my bed. He’s very good with my young nephews and damn I can’t even imagine my life without him.
Interestingly I recall reading quite recently that men outnumber women as cat owners in the UK.
I do love dogs as well and would have one if circumstances allowed it. We had an afghan hound growing up and she was a delightful animal.
They have eight times the rod cells in their retinas than we do, their night vision is much, much better! And they’re also well-attuned to seeing minute movement. So they could be seeing reflections of light that we can’t see. Or maybe they’re having a race!
Sigh, I miss my kitty.
Walking over the thing you’re trying to read or write on seems to be a universal cat trait that they always had.
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/.a/6a00d8341c464853ef01bb08b960e1970d-pi
Seconding Scildfreja on animals and emotion.