I Was Catcalled By An Actual Cat, And It Was Terrifying

I haven’t been able to look at my pussy for days. It’s reminding me of…him. I couldn’t wear mittens when Troy took me to the indoor ice-skating rink, cuz, well, they remind me of what he did to me. I really needed to pee yesterday at the beach, but as I was squatting down in the sand, I couldn’t bring myself to do it—it reminded me too much of how they do it. I know you’re curious, but before I tell you about what I’m so traumatized about, let me give you some context (and don’t look at the title cuz that totally spoils it).

Lately there’s been a lot of talk about catcalling. Feminists (like myself) everywhere have finally set our foot down and condemned the salacious whistles, the unsolicited compliments and the HHH’s (Horny Honking of Horns) that us women have to endure every. fucking. day. Unfortunately catcalling is not illegal yet, but feminists are working day and night in order to ensure that it will soon be classed as “vocal rape,” “honk rape” (not to be confused with “honky rape,” the rape of stereotypical whites), and “thinking-sexual-thoughts-about-woman-walking-by rape.” Soon it will be really easy to put away lowly creeper males for life for daring to interact with fierce, fab, and in-charge women like myself. Soon the streets will be a safe space for Normal Women and Women of Color, devoid of catcalling creeps and full of tolerance. Yay! Girl. Fucking. Power.

Like of course, just to be clear it’s not a crime if the catcaller is hot…cuz then it’s like…not really catcalling, then it’s more, like naughty flirting and a bit of sexy fun or whatever…so to all you hot guys who keep approaching me in the street, I don’t want to scare you away, like, please continue. LOL <3.

What's definitely not sexy fun, but totally sexist unfun, is when lowly creeps catcall. It’s like, different…cuz…um…it just is, OK!? They’re acting like they have a shot, like they’re equal or even have power over us. It makes us women feel bad about ourselves. Like the fact that they can even imagine that we would even consider hooking up with them in a million years is so insulting to our self of steam. I swear, like, everything would be so much better if creeps were just, gone. Like I’m sure the female problems of sell you light and lack toast and tolerancy that many women are facing nowadays would go away if creeps were eliminated, cuz it’s caused by stress or whatever and creeps are totes stressing us out. They.must.be removed.

So yeah, politicians can you hurry up and make catcalling illegal so we can finally punish The Eternal Creep, put away the undesirables, send them off in truckloads so that only good people remain? That’d be great. K thanks.

Anyways, let me tell you about the traumatic incident I so delicately hinted at in the beginning of this piece. The incident was the last camel of the back straw in regards to my hatred for catcalling.

On 4th of July, I was on my way home after I’d had a fun time with my friends in Boston Common (it’s a park, and it’s quite rare actually cuz there’s only one around, so I don’t understand the name). I felt really happy, walking through beautiful Boston on that glorious day, and being the adventurous girl that I am #AnnedianaJones #lol, I decided to take a shortcut through some narrow alleyways. All was fine and dandy and I was a little drunk, (OK very drunk) so I was kind of singing Katy Perry’s “Fireworks” at the top of my lungs. #TypicalCrazyOleAnne

Then, suddenly, I hear a strange whistling from behind a trashcan ahead of me in a particularly dark alleyway. Uggghhh. Not today. I was soooooo over it. “Can’t I go one day, ONE DAY, without being told by how beautiful I am by some short, ugly guy?” I thought to myself, And this guy had to be REALLY short to fit behind a trashcan. At first debated in my head whether to turn around and go the back other way, cuz I didn’t want to be dehumanized and objectified on the happiest and most patriotic day of America, but had I done so, he would have won. So I charged on.

As I reached the trashcan and looked behind it, I was totally gobsmacked. The person sitting there couldn’t have been more than two feet tall, and it wasn’t even a person at all—it was a CAT. It was African American but had a white spot on its nose. Its eyes were yellow, like the skin of an Asian sweatshop worker who’s fallen into a bucket of yellow paint. I clutched my purse. It looked at me for a second with those sharp eyes, and then it started calling out, CATCALLING. “Meowowowwowow Meowowow.” (It sounded something like that.)

Now, I don’t speak cat, especially not Cat Ebonics, but I am like 100% sure that it was trying to objectify my body in some weird cat way; I could tell from the way it was looking at me. Like if those meows had been run through Google Translate they would have come out as “Hey girl, where you going looking like that, you mighty fine, so what’s yo numbah girl, dat ass purrrfect, lemme holla at you, lemme clap dem cheekz hoe.” I know it. I fucking know it. Naturally I was terrified, I was being catcalled by a CAT. I couldn’t believe it. This was evidence of what I had said for a long time: The Patriarchy is controlling ANIMALS too. I’ve been saying that ever since I heard a bird squawk something that sounded a little like “BITCH” back in ’08, but none of my friends have taken me seriously. It was beyond clear that this cat didn’t respect women at all and that it found it completely unproblematic to comment on a woman’s body in a public setting, one that is meant to be a safe space for women. I was like. Wow. Just. Wow. And then I picked the cat up, opened the lid of the trashcan, dropped the little male pawinist into it and walked on, shaking with fear. I could hear the cat screaming from behind me, mad that I hadn’t given it the sex it felt entitled to.

As I got home I wasn’t feline good, like AT ALL. I cried all night that night, I was gonna listen to my cheer-up song “Wild World” but I’m sure you can figure out why I couldn’t listen to it…

This 4th of July really made me aware of how horrible catcalling and cat-catcalling is. I am now more determined than ever to stop it from ever happening again—not just to me, but to women everywhere.

(Oh and now I kinda hate cats now, so please help me get #KillAllCats trending on Twitter.)