For most of my life I have had dogs, cats or both.
The last few years I have only had the pleasure of cat-sitting for our son’s and daughter’s cats. Soon, I’ll be cat-sitting for our grandson’s cat.
So, I speak from experience when I say that cats rule the house.
Jim Davis, the creator of the loveable comic strip Garfield, takes it one step further and claims that “cats rule the world” – and he should know.
On Friday, the First Family announced that they have a White House cat. Her name is Willow, after Jill Biden’s hometown, Willow Grove, Pa.
Willow, a grey, shorthair tabby, hails from a farm in Pennsylvania and has jade green eyes.
According to the ASPCA, there are over 80 million domestic shorthair cats in American homes and “they are quiet and reserved, quirky and fun, strong and independent, sweet and clingy, daring and adventurous, sassy and clever, or a mixture of all of these depending on the mood you catch them in.”
No wonder the First Lady has been eying Willow since the cat jumped onto a stage while Jill Biden was giving a speech on the 2020 presidential election campaign trail. TIME
Two-year-old Willow will have to be all of these — strong and independent, daring and adventurous, sassy and clever – to rule over 6-month-old Commander presently in the White House. (Major has been sidelined) We have no doubt she’ll succeed with flying colors.
After four years of a White House lacking the happy yaps of a dog and the pleading meows and endearing purrs of a cat, the Bidens have reintroduced these precious creatures to the people’s house.
However, it has been more than a decade since the nation had a First Cat. The last feline occupant of the White House, before Willow, was George W. Bush’s India, and before her the Clintons’ Socks and the Fords’ and the Carters’ cats.
The tradition goes all the way back to Abraham Lincoln, “considered to be the first President to have cats as family pets in the White House.”
And let us not forget President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) who not only had cats, but also “a one-legged rooster, dogs, horses, a pony, snakes, kangaroo rats, a flying squirrel and a badger named Josiah who had a penchant for nipping people’s legs.”
Willow may not get to “rule the world,” as Jim Davis says. However, as the pet of the world’s most powerful man, she’ll be privy to some of the most guarded secrets and world-shaking decisions.
In TIME’s “Where the New First Cat Fits in the History of Presidential Pets,” Olivia Waxman writes about Warren G. Harding’s dog, Laddie Boy, :
Time will tell how much influence the Bidens’ cat will have. Warren G. Harding’s dog Laddie Boy, by some measures the first celebrity presidential pet, attended cabinet meetings and was hounded by newspaper reporters who regularly covered his whereabouts.
Keep in mind that Laddie Boy was “only a dog.” The possibilities for a “sassy and clever” Willow are virtually unlimited.
It is a good thing that Willow will be able to keep a secret, for, as Nan Porter famously said, “If cats could talk, they wouldn’t.”
