Nine Lives
by Michael Schaffer
FEBRUARY 20, 2009 TAGS:
One of the most telling political photographs of the past few decades is a snapshot of a cat. Against an unassuming suburban backdrop, the picture shows a black-and-white feline crouched on a sidewalk while an equipment-laden quintet of photographers close in. The paparazzi, it turned out, had lured the cat outside so they could get the shot all America wanted to see. It was November of 1992, and that animal's owner, Bill Clinton, had just been elected president of the United States.
The Clintons were reportedly furious at this early brush with the prying media, their first bump against the all-encompassing publicity bubble that would soon envelop two-legged and four-legged family members alike. Socks the cat, however, seemed less concerned. Where the new president embodied change by bringing a new overtly emotional style to politics, his family pet — daughter Chelsea brought the homeless cat home a year before the campaign — retained an aloof public mien.
But that wasn’t to say he wasn’t also a transformational figure. In some ways, Socks, who died Friday, February 20, 2009 at 19, represented an even more sweeping change than the man who brought him to Washington.
Presidents, like leaders throughout history, have always had pets. In the old days, keeping animals in luxurious splendor — think of Mary, Queen of Scots and her pack of velvet-clad pugs — was a way for potentates to further elevate themselves above the people. In our modern, egalitarian democracy, by contrast, domestic animals let powerful politicians play everyman. Franklin Roosevelt may have been a wealthy patrician presiding over a depression-buffeted country, but when the president cuddled his beloved Fala, FDR seemed as if he could be your neighbor.
For the purposes of political theater, though, either version of political-pet symbolism is easier with a dog than a cat: Dogs, after all, will sit still for both royal costuming and LBJ-style ear-swinging. Cats, as Socks’ photographic suitors learned, won’t sit for much of anything. Thus while a few presidents have kept cats around, according to the Williamsburg, Va., Presidential Pets Museum, they’d always played second-fiddle to the first family’s other animals. Until Socks came along.
The idea of a respected public figure nuzzling with a pet cat may seem unobjectionable now, but it would have seemed odd until not long before Clinton’s election. Well into America’s postwar pet boom, cats lagged behind: The first vet school classes on cats were only introduced in the late 1960s; the first professional journal about feline medicine started some years later. Though they’re a less expensive pet, their population didn’t catch up with dogs until late in the 20th century. Even then, the species contended with a number of cultural associations — cats were menacing, they were mysterious, and they were feminine — that weren’t exactly appealing to typical pols. Bill Clinton, with his feminist wife and his willingness to tear up, proved a groundbreaker.
Whether or not the general public was thinking about the semiotics of White House pets, Socks was an instant hit. Children’s online tours of the presidential mansion were led by a cartoon version of the cat, whose likeness appeared everywhere from "Murphy Brown" to a set of collectors’ stamps issued by the Central African Republic. And, in an inversion of the way earlier leaders had used families and animals to soften their images, it was Hillary Clinton, whose reputation had remained far chillier than her husband’s, who relied on Socks to connect with ordinary people. She took the cat with her on personal appearances. In 1998, she edited a collection of the thousands of letters children had mailed the family pet. It was only with Socks’ arrival in the White House, she wrote, that “this house became a home.”
But as with so many other idealistic souls who followed the Arkansan to Washington, Socks did not escape the partisan attacks — or the personal betrayals — that characterized his era. At one point, Dan Burton, the right-wing congressman and scourge of the Clinton administration, turned his investigatory energy on the cat, questioning the use of White House personnel to answer letters mailed to Socks. But even greater pain would come from another direction. In 1997, the president adopted a chocolate lab named Buddy, who quickly lept past the cat in his master’s affections. The traditional pet order had been re-established. Socks had been triangulated.
And while Bill and Hillary managed to repair their relationship after his affair with Monica Lewinsky, Buddy’s arrival signaled a permanent rupture for Socks. One 1998 photograph shows the cat, fur standing up, arching his back in anger as the president ambled over in the company of his beloved dog. Clinton joked that he had an easier time bringing Israelis and Palenstinians together than getting his pets to interact. At any rate, the president made his choice: On leaving office in 2001, Buddy moved to New York with the family. Socks moved to southern Maryland with Betty Currie, Clinton’s old secretary, whose desk outside the Oval Office Socks had once frequented.
A final betrayal? Not so, the family insisted. “To make this time of transition as easy as possible for Socks, the family decided that it would be best, while the Washington residence is being readied for occupancy, if he stayed with someone that he knew and with whom he has spent a great deal of time in the last eight years,” Hillary Clinton’s new senatorial office wrote to the Socks the Cat Fan Club. But the cat wound up staying with Currie even after Mrs. Clinton moved into her new house off Massachusetts Avenue.
Perhaps that was just as well. Buddy was hit by a car and killed not long after moving north with Bill. Socks, on the other hand, spent the Bush years in apparent safety and comfort at Currie’s waterfront home, able to venture outside at will — a change from his White House days — and occasionally appearing at hospitals and charitable events. He was treated for thyroid and kidney problems. Currie’s husband once told a local newspaper that the cat lived better than he did.
Even that apparently successful arrangement, of course, might have caused some political trouble had this year gone differently: As Hillary Clinton readied her own presidential bid, the alleged jettisoning of a family pet — particularly by someone who sermonized about the responsibilities of pet-ownership in Dear Socks — gained brief traction as an anti-Clinton attack meme. Barack Obama’s primary victory, however, essentially guaranteed that Socks would live out his days quietly. Rest in Peace, Socks: You’ll never be baited by photographers, or queried by right-wing congressmen, again.
Michael Schaffer book on the American pet industry One Nation Under Dog will be published March 31.
The Clintons were reportedly furious at this early brush with the prying media, their first bump against the all-encompassing publicity bubble that would soon envelop two-legged and four-legged family members alike. Socks the cat, however, seemed less concerned. Where the new president embodied change by bringing a new overtly emotional style to politics, his family pet — daughter Chelsea brought the homeless cat home a year before the campaign — retained an aloof public mien. But that wasn’t to say he wasn’t also a transformational figure. In some ways, Socks, who died Friday, February 20, 2009 at 19, represented an even more sweeping change than the man who brought him to Washington.
Presidents, like leaders throughout history, have always had pets. In the old days, keeping animals in luxurious splendor — think of Mary, Queen of Scots and her pack of velvet-clad pugs — was a way for potentates to further elevate themselves above the people. In our modern, egalitarian democracy, by contrast, domestic animals let powerful politicians play everyman. Franklin Roosevelt may have been a wealthy patrician presiding over a depression-buffeted country, but when the president cuddled his beloved Fala, FDR seemed as if he could be your neighbor.
For the purposes of political theater, though, either version of political-pet symbolism is easier with a dog than a cat: Dogs, after all, will sit still for both royal costuming and LBJ-style ear-swinging. Cats, as Socks’ photographic suitors learned, won’t sit for much of anything. Thus while a few presidents have kept cats around, according to the Williamsburg, Va., Presidential Pets Museum, they’d always played second-fiddle to the first family’s other animals. Until Socks came along.
The idea of a respected public figure nuzzling with a pet cat may seem unobjectionable now, but it would have seemed odd until not long before Clinton’s election. Well into America’s postwar pet boom, cats lagged behind: The first vet school classes on cats were only introduced in the late 1960s; the first professional journal about feline medicine started some years later. Though they’re a less expensive pet, their population didn’t catch up with dogs until late in the 20th century. Even then, the species contended with a number of cultural associations — cats were menacing, they were mysterious, and they were feminine — that weren’t exactly appealing to typical pols. Bill Clinton, with his feminist wife and his willingness to tear up, proved a groundbreaker.
Whether or not the general public was thinking about the semiotics of White House pets, Socks was an instant hit. Children’s online tours of the presidential mansion were led by a cartoon version of the cat, whose likeness appeared everywhere from "Murphy Brown" to a set of collectors’ stamps issued by the Central African Republic. And, in an inversion of the way earlier leaders had used families and animals to soften their images, it was Hillary Clinton, whose reputation had remained far chillier than her husband’s, who relied on Socks to connect with ordinary people. She took the cat with her on personal appearances. In 1998, she edited a collection of the thousands of letters children had mailed the family pet. It was only with Socks’ arrival in the White House, she wrote, that “this house became a home.”But as with so many other idealistic souls who followed the Arkansan to Washington, Socks did not escape the partisan attacks — or the personal betrayals — that characterized his era. At one point, Dan Burton, the right-wing congressman and scourge of the Clinton administration, turned his investigatory energy on the cat, questioning the use of White House personnel to answer letters mailed to Socks. But even greater pain would come from another direction. In 1997, the president adopted a chocolate lab named Buddy, who quickly lept past the cat in his master’s affections. The traditional pet order had been re-established. Socks had been triangulated.
And while Bill and Hillary managed to repair their relationship after his affair with Monica Lewinsky, Buddy’s arrival signaled a permanent rupture for Socks. One 1998 photograph shows the cat, fur standing up, arching his back in anger as the president ambled over in the company of his beloved dog. Clinton joked that he had an easier time bringing Israelis and Palenstinians together than getting his pets to interact. At any rate, the president made his choice: On leaving office in 2001, Buddy moved to New York with the family. Socks moved to southern Maryland with Betty Currie, Clinton’s old secretary, whose desk outside the Oval Office Socks had once frequented.
A final betrayal? Not so, the family insisted. “To make this time of transition as easy as possible for Socks, the family decided that it would be best, while the Washington residence is being readied for occupancy, if he stayed with someone that he knew and with whom he has spent a great deal of time in the last eight years,” Hillary Clinton’s new senatorial office wrote to the Socks the Cat Fan Club. But the cat wound up staying with Currie even after Mrs. Clinton moved into her new house off Massachusetts Avenue.
Perhaps that was just as well. Buddy was hit by a car and killed not long after moving north with Bill. Socks, on the other hand, spent the Bush years in apparent safety and comfort at Currie’s waterfront home, able to venture outside at will — a change from his White House days — and occasionally appearing at hospitals and charitable events. He was treated for thyroid and kidney problems. Currie’s husband once told a local newspaper that the cat lived better than he did. Even that apparently successful arrangement, of course, might have caused some political trouble had this year gone differently: As Hillary Clinton readied her own presidential bid, the alleged jettisoning of a family pet — particularly by someone who sermonized about the responsibilities of pet-ownership in Dear Socks — gained brief traction as an anti-Clinton attack meme. Barack Obama’s primary victory, however, essentially guaranteed that Socks would live out his days quietly. Rest in Peace, Socks: You’ll never be baited by photographers, or queried by right-wing congressmen, again.
Michael Schaffer book on the American pet industry One Nation Under Dog will be published March 31.
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