The last thing I thought I’d have to think about this year are childless cat ladies. You too, I bet.

Many of us have funny ideas about who really is running things, you know, the power behind the throne. Is it the Trilateral Commission? George Soros? Clarence Thomas and friends on the Supreme Court? The cabal behind these annoying summer road projects?

You probably heard that JD Vance, vice presidential nominee, has gone in an entirely different direction. In a 2021 interview with Tucker Carlson, JD said our nation is being run “via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies.” Among them: Kamala Harris, reigning vice president who actually has two stepchildren, but whatever.

First, let’s get this out of the way: Childless Cat Ladies would be a terrific name for a punk band — or a horror movie, as in Revenge of the Childless Cat Ladies. (Save me a spot at the Fairlee Drive-In.)

I’m with him on the corporate oligarchs, maybe, but beyond that he’s on his own. Taunting someone for being childless seems plain mean. Calling them “ladies” seems like he's been reading Ladies Home Journal again. But conspiratorial cats? I had to know more.

In my quickie internet research I found a Smithsonian Magazine article headlined “How Cats Conquered the World.” (Now we are getting somewhere.)

About 10,000 years ago, give or take a millennium or two, they linked up with humans in the Near East, when we started storing grains, which attracted pests. Cats to the rescue!

The article said cats were handy on ships, where rodents ate food and gnawed on ropes. Vikings and other seafarers welcomed cats aboard and enabled their spread around the world — except Antarctica, which sensible cats have no use for. (If there were Viking cat ladies, or catmaidens, they would be awesome.)

I suppose that here in the Upper Valley, barn cats did their part, which earned their descendants a life of luxury. They eat like kings, sleep 20 hours a day, and reveal nothing about their nocturnal plots and schemes. We think we are the masters, but who can say?

But back to the world according to Vance. He went on to say that evil cat ladies “live in one-bedroom apartments in New York City.” They are obsessed with wealth, work and have “no direct stake” in the nation’s future. Not only that, they “hate normal Americans for choosing family over these ridiculous D.C. and New York status games.”

Was Vance traumatized, perhaps, by being forced to watch “Sex and the City”? 

Something about his tone rang familiar. My thoughts went back to anti-suffrage materials I ran into last year while reading a bit about Alice Hay Wadsworth. She was a daughter of John Hay, the diplomat who built The Fells, a summer estate in Newbury, N.H. (worth touring). She was also president for a time of the National Association Opposed to Womens’ Suffrage. 

One pamphlet claimed that women demanding the right to vote were plain spinsters who couldn’t get a husband. “Oh, this has been going on for a long time,’’ I said. A poster from southern allies warned of America becoming feminized. One talking point: “A Vote for Federal Suffrage is a Vote for Organized Female Nagging Forever.” 

Men ruled the world, and I suppose it’s not easy to share power. Perhaps the real problem with women is that they are women, and not men.

To be fair, Vance recently said he was being sarcastic when he said what he said. But not about Democrats being “anti-family.” 

I don’t know, I think we’ve moved beyond “Leave it to Beaver” (though I loved that program) and “Father Knows Best”. (In real life, Robert Young, Father, was beset by alcoholism and depression, which suggests it ain’t necessarily so.) (And I’m overusing parenthetical remarks — sorry.)

If you’ve been reading the news, you know that Vance mightily offended Jennifer Aniston (our Rachel from “Friends”), and the faithful fans of Taylor Swift. She has no children, but she has about four billion followers, so there’s that.

It seems a bad time to go negative about women, on a week when their Olympic achievements simply amaze. (This following Caitlin Clark flashing across the sky like a newly discovered meteor.) Simone Biles has the grace of a ballerina and looks like she could leap over tall buildings with a single bound — a pint-sized Superman or, umm, Superwoman. 

Ilona Maher of Burlington and the U.S. rugby players are fierce, fast and simply formidable. 

I don’t know if they have children or cats, but they are a force to reckon with. Belittle them at your own risk.

Dan Mackie lives in West Lebanon. He can be reached at dan.mackie@yahoo.com.