Meanwhile, On the Home Front, I Have Growing Suspicions My Male Cats Are Totally Gay
Posted on January 27, 2010 Posted by John Scalzi 71 Comments
It’s because in the last several days I have come across Zeus and Lopsided Cat openly and enthusiastically grooming and gently headbutting each other in open, conspicuous places, followed by a casual glance over to me as if to say “What? You have a problem with two male cats showing their affection for each other in their own home?”
For the record, I do not. Indeed, I celebrate their feline gayness, inasmuch as two cats who have had their gonads removed can be said to be gay, which I think is a fair amount, since “gay” encompasses more than physical sexuality and gonads (or lack thereof). And anyway, what sort of hypocrite would I be if I supported same-sex marriage but viewed my two male cats tongue-bathing each other and thought, dude, that’s just wrong. It’s not. Go, Lopsided Cat and Zeus! I wish you joy.
That said, it is kind of sudden. Lopsided Cat has generally viewed Zeus as something of a nuisance, to be smacked about whenever the younger cat got too uppity but otherwise to be ignored. For Lopsided Cat to go from benign neglect of his fellow cat to open affection seemingly in the space of a few days is a little weird. But then, I don’t speak cat. Maybe this has all been simmering under the surface, like how in all those romantic comedies the leads can’t stand each other and then suddenly they’re mad for each other. This is like that. With cats. Who may be gay.
I know some of you are thinking, “yes, yes, but what does Ghlaghghee think about this turn of events?” She is perhaps unsurprisingly perfectly okay with it. Ghlaghghee has always struck me as an unusually tolerant cat (although she, like Lopsided Cat, has to been known to smack around Zeus when he gets out of line), and so her apprehension of these current events seems to be along the “Oh. Huh. Well, okay, then” line. Which of course is just fine with me. It’d be sad to have to have a talk to her about embracing diversity, not the least because I don’t speak cat. So that’s one awkward discussion avoided. For which I think we are all grateful.
It’s definitely a romance novel trope–the tension and the antagonism hiding the sexual chemistry. Zeus probably dipped Lopsided’s tail in his inkwell at one point in his youth, but reconsidered long enough to write Lopsided this note:
Lopsided:
Will you go with me? Check one.
[ ] yes [ ] no
Zeus
Note from Lopsided (the i’s are dotted):
Go with you where?
two pictures of pretty cats and a post full of funny. thank you for brightening my day. :)
Yeah, our dog is refusing to get married until all animals everywhere are allowed to marry, so more power to your cats.
It’s really upsetting, though, because we had her arranged to wed this great Golden Retriever who would have given us a huge dowry.
Gives new meaning to the term ‘slash fiction’.
Since they’ve worked out their dominance issues with each other, I’d worry about those glances they’re giving you — they may be thinking that you’re pretty redundant in the pride now.
Mutual lickerbation?
So which of the three cats is the beard in this complex relationship?
I’ve got two male cats that have had their bits snipped, and they’ve been totally gay for each other since pretty much day one. I’ll be sitting at my computer, minding my own business, and suddenly my significant other will turn to me, look deeply into my eyes, and say, “Honey, the cats are being gay again.”
Well, duh.
I’m OK with the gaiety of my male cats. But when one of them starts having his way with my wool sweater…
Sheesh, always right to the sex with humans. It’s obvious Loppy and Zeus have an insidious case of face mites, and are trying to help each other out.
Perv.
One of my cats, until we got her fixed, would fixate on a specific other female cat every single time she (the first cat) was in heat. There would be dramatic yowling, molestation attempts, stealth cuddle attacks, and a great deal of stalking, all while Cat #2 attempted to politely but nervously explain that sorry, but she doesn’t swing that way.
(Except around her sister. But that’s a completely different story.)
Of our four cats, all are male, one is gay. He’s been very open about itt for years. The problem is, none of our other cats are and as a result gets he gets smacked around fairly often.
if this wasn’t bad enough, our female dog tries to hump this said cat. Both are snipped, different genders and different species.
Weird.
co-grooming is not really gay among cats. Heck, my dog used to groom my cat after every fight, when his head was bloody and muddy, he would go to the “dog attention” station for a good lickdown.
co-grooming among cats is the same behavior as one-upmanship between wall street types.
you’ll only have a problem if one of the cats goes into heat.
Yup, I know about grooming and dominance as it relates to cats. But this sort of goes beyond, you know?
Also, if one of the two goes into heat, I’ve been wrong about my cats on several different levels.
“But this sort of goes beyond, you know?”
Yes we know. And my wool sweater knows too. :)
I have two male cats that do this all the time. They are brothers. Should I be worried?
I suppose not. They will try to groom any creature that comes into my house and stays still long enough. They even try to clean my bookbag, though that mostly involves covering it in fur.
I, for one, cheer their decision to come out of the closet. (Mine spend a lot of time closed up in the closet, but that’s because they sneak in there every time I open the door.)
A while back we had two snipped male cats, and the younger kept trying to mount the older who was most emphatically not into it. Much yowling and clawing and running about.
People with dogs don’t have this much to say about their animals’ gayness. Just “get the hose”.
(Just in case you haven’t been around hunting dogs, getting the hose is an act of mercy, solving a specific problem. Don’t make me go into detail.)
DP, the phrase ‘copulatory lock‘
comessprings unbidden to my mind.O Great Scalzi, what a excellent pair of pictures of Mighty Lopsided Cat and TempCat Zeus.
Not perfectly composed, mind you – but acceptably. Next time move the chair and improve the lighting.
Instead of speculating about the cause of Their Newfound Fellowship you properly (for a change) refrain from promoting your usual nonsensical conjectures and ask for help.
Well done.
The Executive Committee of The Official Ghlaghghee Fan Club is pleased to offer the correct explanation: the Perfect Aura of the Beauteous Ghlaghghee not only Illuminates the World with Radiant Perfection but also imparts a Sense of Well-Being and Deep Contentment that all sophisticated and sensitive lifeforms respond to.
Even you sense this Radiance, however dimly and distantly (inspite of Her Most Heroic Efforts).
If you need any other explanations the Executive Committee stands ready.
The Official Ghlaghghee Fan Club
Somehow “copulatory lock” is not an issue when it’s the female attempting to reassert her dominance over the younger male. It is however, damned funny since she’s half his size.
Mr. Scalzi said this:
And yet Chang, albeit not that Chang, along apparently with the entire Executive Committee, failed to reprimand Mr. Scalzi for daring to presume to know Ghlaghghee’s thoughts.
As an admirer of the sterling record that Chang (but not Chang) and the Executive Committee have accumulated for their past work in these comment threads, I find this lapse to be deeply troubling. They are clearly failing to uphold the standards that they themselves have previously set. Perhaps it is time to elect a new Executive Committee?
Not that there’s anything wrong with this.
I used to have a little dog that apparently was not only gay, but into bestiality. The only things I ever saw him attempt to hump were male cats. The results were never very pretty, but the scratches always healed.
Silence, typically foolish commenter of the Whatever.
You are damned by your own quote.
First, Blacklisted Scalzi asked the question. He of course couched it in terms of his audience, but the Executive Committee was well aware he was asking us. Smart move, and one clearly complying with our prior admonishments.
Second, he then continued with a properly hesitant (“… is perhaps …”) and suitably glorifying (“… perfectly …”) comment. He correctly avoided his usual foolish interpretation.
Third, the Executive Committee didn’t actually read Blacklisted Scalzi’s tripe that closely. Can you really blame us?
The Official Ghlaghghee Fan Club
Apology accepted. Provisionally.
It’s the time of year that female cats “biologically prepare” for spring kittens. Perhaps the boys have whiffs of an interesting smelling female cat within 10 miles and are remembering their affectionate impulses. And maybe, they’re just beginning to be a bit more public and soon you’ll discover why the handbags, lipstick, and Victoria’s Secret catalogs have been disappearing.
As to mistaken identities: I’ve been around kittens 30+ years. I had a mama cat named “Herman” through human error when I was a kid, and just last year had a female go to my parents who’d been raised as “Oscar” for 10 weeks. Cats are damned hard to be sure of until puberty.
I think if I want to know what Ghlaghghee thinks about her gay siblings/roommates/batting toys, I will wait until she Tweets it.
That being said, I really want to thank you for being so adamently pro-gay in your writing. Want to come officiate at my same sex wedding in October? Seattle is lovely in October and the caterer is supposed to be fantastic. It will be a combination of our mutual gay family, her Jewish bio family and my white-trash bio family. My mother will be force fed a xanax early on to prevent a repeat of my brothers wedding.
Womyn2me, Congratulations. As for the request you posed to Scalzi, you might want to read this oldish post.
I don’t know how to tell you this Scalzi, but you’ve almost certainly mistaken the sex of one of your cats, not the gender.
The gene that codes for orange colored fur is a mutation of the gene that codes for black. The gene is located on the X chromosome. Thus, the only way a cat can have both orange and black fur is to have two X chromosomes. And so your lovely little “tortie” is a girl, not a boy. It is possible, yet highly unlikely, that the cat could have an extra gene, but as in humans being XXY is exceedingly rare.
You can find very detailed information at The Universe’s Most Detailed Repository of Knowledge here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calico_cat
Best,
Yes, and I have two male cats named Morgan and Linnet (I was going through my Arthurian phase at the time). They’re littermates. The lady who gave them to me (at six weeks old) was quite sure they were female. Took ’em to the vet for their first checkup the following week, and the vet said, they’re fine, you can bring the boys back in when they’re six months old and we’ll neuter them. Oops.
Linnet, until his recent illnesses (they’re sixteen now), was a very sturdy, masculine cat with an unmistakable swagger. Morgan is indubitably the most limp-wristed cat I’ve ever met. I don’t know if that means he’s gay.
But they’re both extremely affectionate with each other, and sleep together a great deal of the time…
My theory is that there’s catnip involved somewhere.
Soph:
If you think I’m confused about the sex of my cat, think how my vet, who removed his testicles, must feel!
Which is to say I am more than reasonably sure Lopsided Cat is male.
Sure, you’re tolerant now. But wait until they’re banging each other, in public, in the hallway.
Remember, just because you love someone doesn’t mean you have to love everything they do.
Time to learn Cat for “Dudes! Get a room!”
– yeff
@John Scalzi 34
That’s just extra awesome sice it means Lopsided Cat is either XXY, or a chimera.
The genetic abnormality could go a long way in explaining the cat’s moniker.
On the down side, since most XXY animals are sterile, the need to remove his testicles is something Lopsided Cat would probably have argued was a bit unnecessary. You know, if any of us understood cat.
Owning a tortoiseshell cat myself– scratch that– Having a tortoiseshell cat that, at present, allows me to live in the same domicile as her, I happened to have researched it a bit earlier. She is of the sweet but non-mutant variety.
When it comes down to it, I just think it’s cool that something as microscopic as a specific genetic allele can have such an easily visible macroscopic effect. It certainly happens in all sorts of ways, in all sorts of different plants and animals, but this particular example of Genetics In Action routinely demands food and attention.
It’s Science!
Now with added claws.
/soph
We’re here! We’re queer! We’re going to barf on your carpet!
Okay, maybe the slogans don’t work as well for cats.
All of my cats groom each other. The female demands to be groomed by the other four males in the house. Now if one of your cats starts to bite the other’s neck, then there might be some dominance issues. Geez, I never thought that I could have four gay male cats. I just thought that the older males were being good daddies by cleaning the younger ones.
I really do wish I could speak cat. I have two cats that will meow back and forth with me, almost like a conversation. They must think I’m strange.
Due, they’re not gay. They had some really strong catnip and shit went down — but it doesn’t count because they were high, and if you pretend it never happened it didn’t…
“The female demands to be groomed by the other four males in the house.”
1) SITCOM PREMISE!!!!!
2) Cue pr0n theme here.
3) If they’re aliens, it’s an SF SITCOM PREMISE!!!!
Unrelated: I’m glad to see that Chateaux Scalzi has made the same mistake as Castle Olson did — namely, having a selection of cats guaranteed to shed hair of a contrasting color to whatever you might wear or carry.
If they develop a sudden interest in Barbara Streisand albums & demand to be taken to a Kathy Griffin show, that pretty much seals it.
At least nowadays being a queer kitty isn’t the catastrophe that it used to be. Just tell the parents they’re room mates.
Iain wrote:
“If they develop a sudden interest in Barbara Streisand albums…”
Must our gay cats deal with those outdated stereotypes? At least three of my five verifiably male and snipped cats are openly gay. And I assure you, if they saw Johnny Weir’s latest skating costume
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/27/johnny-weir-under-fire-fo_n_438424.html
they would not waste one moment of admiration before they shredded it to pieces.
Moseltov John!
We want wedding pictures when the day comes.
Erik @40, Experience has taught me that any cat, of any colour, is capable of shedding hair of assorted colours to contrast with everything you own.
We had an all-black cat (the only cat in the household, at the time) who managed to provide white & ginger hairs to ensure proper coverage of dark surfaces and clothing, and later had a ginger cat who shed dark hairs on light surfaces.
If we could speak cat, we could ask them how they manage it…
Okay, have to say this as rude as it is..I apologize in advance..I’m sorry, it just popped in there…I’m SOOOOOOO Sorry
cats can only be lesbians, they only like —–
Oh, god. My two neutered male dogs take it to a whole ‘nother level.
Oh, glenn.
craig @39, so a feline version of the Six Beers Rule?
Our cat Vinnie is very openly gay. Particularly with our other cat, Happy, who is somewhat less flaming.
We’re totally fine with it. It freaks out a fundie relative, though, which is always amusing as hell.
So yeah, totally okay with gay marriage — whether it’s human or other animal.
It’s amusing how often so-called “unnatural behavior” happens in nature.
Pat Robertson will soon claim that the natural disaster you will witness at some point is because your cats act gay.
ps – this is humour.
Bearpaw, from what I’ve heard about bonobos, they seem to be like chimps, but far nicer. And they have sex all the time and with as many of each other as they want. Girl on girl, boy on boy, groups. I don’t think humans fall too far away from that tree.
TGA, bonobos are also the only primates that have never been observed to kill their own kind.
There’s a lesson there for humans, I think.
Xopher, they are obviously so messed up that we would be doing them a big favor if we killed them all. Is that the kind of lesson you were thinking of? I can’t wait to bag me one of them homo-bonobos.
“It’d be sad to have to have a talk to her about embracing diversity… ”
Did anyone else have trouble reading the phrase “to have to have”? I had to say it in my head several times before I realized that I pronouce the first “have” differently than the secodn “have”. I say it “to haf to hav”.
Is that just me? Do I need to go to speech therapy?
I am pro-homo-bonobo, TGA. My organization promoting the pro-homo-bonobo agenda needs graphics, though: we need a pro-homo-bonobo logo. You know?
Matthew, try saying “I want to have tea with…” I think the v is assimilating to the t and coming out as an f. The fact that ‘to’ is a proclitic reduces the first ‘have’ still further.
Xopher, it the logo can be a heart shape, composed of interlocking bonobos in a 69 possition. Above the heart will be a plus sign. And beneith the heart will be the words LOVE MORE. Just in time for Valentines Day.
TGA, so it’s the LoMo pro-homo-bonobo logo? And if the logo were unveiled in Lomé, and Cher’s daughter Chastity and that guy from U2 led the ceremony, and we had representatives from the homeless community in my town there…
…it would be a Bono-Bono Hobo-hobo Togo LoMo pro-homo-bonobo logo.
I can keep this up, you know.
We could take a photo.
But that might be a no-no.
This is getting to be like the weirdest Dr. Seuss book ever.
The one with the beadles? Thank you for recognizing my homage, John.
They’re just “prison gay”.
See “Is Your Dog Gay” by Charles Kreloff, et al. I found it in the Abebooks Weird Books section, right next to “The Haunted Vagina” by Carlton Mellick III.
Ghlaghghee is obviously a big yaoi fan.
Your little kitty friends with Scoutmaster Syndrome may just be telling you that they need some new names – some ideas: Analingus, Penilingus, & Johnson Bar. Gosh, this is ever-so-much more fun than Dr. Seuss…
Isn’t it obvious that your cats are basically just “prison gay”?
@ Soph #36: “That’s just extra awesome since it means Lopsided Cat is either XXY, or a chimera.”
Hmm. Lopsided Cat doesn’t really look like a tortie, actually. He has a brown tabby coat with rich golden undercoat, but that’s from a different gene than the one responsible for the orange hair, and one not carried by the X chromosome. So Lopsided Cat may be a perfectly normal XY male, genetically speaking.
Still totally gay, though.
They are just experimenting. Cat nip does crazy things. Looks like they are having a gay old time.