And suddenly, Benjamin Button was back in the news. Not Francis Scott Fitzgerald's hero, played on screen by Brad Pitt in 2008, but Taylor Swift's cat. On September 10, global star Swift took a stand in favor of Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for the US presidential election at the end of the ABC debate, triggering the anger of Donald Trump, who posted "I HATE Taylor Swift!" the following Sunday on his social media. On Instagram, Swift then posted with her ragdoll, a species of cat native to the US, signing her post "Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady." Without even naming him, the 34-year-old artist with 284 million followers was responding to JD Vance, the Republican candidate's running mate. In a video from 2021, which resurfaced in July, he used this spinster stereotype to refer to Democrats, including Harris, whom he dismissed as being "unhappy in their lives."
Benjamin Button had already enjoyed his moment of glory in 2023: Wrapped boa-style around the singer's neck, he appeared on the cover of Time magazine when his owner was named "Personality of the Year." The bushy-furred, blue-eyed cat is a favorite with Swifties – the artist's fans – who have given him his own page on Swiftipedia, a site dedicated to their idol. Swift is crazy about her three cats, which she shows off in all their glory on her social media, often with the hashtag #catlady, and sometimes incorporates into her music videos. The ragdoll is the youngest of them all. She adopted him in 2019 after meeting him on the set of her track "ME!" where the kitten was to make an appearance.
Swift isn't the first to denounce Vance's comments, but she does so with a well-honed sense of style. The woman who started out in country music has turned her cat, an animal once associated with paganism and witchcraft, into a symbol. Like certain American suffragettes who, at the beginning of the 20th century, reappropriated the figure of the cat used by women's anti-voting propaganda, the 34-year-old inverts stereotypes to present the cat as the embodiment of the free and autonomous woman – displeasing the grumpy. "I've educated myself now and it's time to take the masking tape of my mouth," she said in Miss Americana, a documentary airing on Netflix in 2020.
Whether intentionally or not, Benjamin Button mirrors another controversy. Relayed by Trump during the debate against Harris, a racist fake news story claims Haitian migrants have been eating the pet cats and dogs of residents in Springfield (Ohio). Cat memes, parodic or otherwise, from both camps have flooded social media. These pets ready for combat or on the run behind the wheel of a car and Trump shimmying to a remix of "they eat cats, they eat dogs" have been seen millions of times.