May 9, 2009: Cat Ladies
“They don’t call you ‘Crazy Cat Lady’ to give you a compliment”, says one of the women profiled in Cat Ladies, a documentary which attempts to address just what it is that makes some women (it is acknowledged that it happens to men but far more rarely) so passionate about cats, in extreme cases to the exclusion of most other social interaction.
Four women are profiled here, and we hop around among their stories throughout the film. One has 3 cats, and longs for human companionship but fills that void with the love of her cats. Another woman, a 35-year-old who has gradually crept up to her current count of 16 cats, knows that something is wrong but can’t quite put her finger on what it is. A well-off retired woman who now has 124 cats also knows that something is wrong, but realizes that she is stuck, and will continue to struggle. A fourth woman who rescues stray cats, sometimes mistaking free-roaming neighbourhood cats with strays, seems to be clearly a bit crazy and also has over 100 cats, and doesn’t see any problem with what she’s doing.
When I say a couple of times in the previous paragraph that something is wrong, I don’t mean that judgmentally. The women admit that they don’t like a facet of their lives, but struggle to deal with it. The lonely woman who saves all of her cats’ whiskers in a little jar strikes me as someone who is doing something I would never bother with, but it’s harmless and she can do what she wants. The 35-year-old knows and admits that having 16 cats is probably contributing to her difficulty in finding a boyfriend, and knows that she’s the only one who can change the situation if that’s what she wants. The wealthier older woman has $3000/month carrying costs for her 100+ cats, which is starting to put significant financial pressure on her, and she realizes this may be what it takes to make her change her approach.
The footage of the houses with 100+ cats is almost surreal. There are multiple cats everywhere, on furniture and floors and on shelves and beds. Just cleaning litter boxes is a job taking multiple hours per day, with one woman having a cleaning woman in nightly to help her with vacuuming and other tasks.
Despite the undertone of sadness, there is a good deal of laughter and tender behaviour in the film. The cats bring joy to these women. There were a number of uncomfortable laughs from the audience as well, which made me feel bad for the ladies who were just bonding with their cats and playing with them, but can be embarrassing to see such raw emotional interactions up close. For the most point, nobody is harmed by any of this. To be fair, the scenarios with over one hundred cats in a house do indeed affect others, as an interview with one neighbour illustrates. He can never open the windows of his house at all because of the stench from next door. However, apparently the municipal inspectors make sure that the environment is healthy and clean enough, so this poor neighbour finds himself helpless. Sometimes I’m glad I live in a large city with seemingly restrictive and arcane by-laws which in reality keep things fairly civilized.
There are fascinating and nearly horrifying stories here, and I think Cat Ladies captures the lives of these women, even if it unfortunately doesn’t do much to explain them.
A sensitive examination of different lifestyles.
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