A Passion for Pussies
By Arnold Wayne Jones
Documeowntary Cat Daddies proves it’s no dog.
All queer people experience it eventually: Coming out. When you say – first to yourself, then close friends, then the world at large – “I am who I am and you need to know it and accept it if we are to move on together.”
I refer, of course, to confessing to being a cat lover.
Oh, sure, we come out as gay or trans or nonbinary – it takes courage, yadda yadda… but saying “I love cats!”??? That can be a bridge too far for some guys.
At least that’s the premise of the absolutely authentic but plays like a joke documentary Cat Daddies, in which a parade of men (many gay, but for the straight ones, an even more fraught process) admit to being out-and-proud lovers of pussies.
That’s true of Nathan Kehn, an Instagram content creator and (straight) cat dad of four frisky felines. He’s lost acting gigs, he says, when casting directors see his Insta and think, “Who is this freak?” That’s not a reaction anyone expects for doggie daddies. How did it come to be that guys have dogs and women have cats? (Kehn’s social media handle is Crazy Cat Lady.) How has masculinity become so tied up in the kind of pet we gravitate toward?
It’s more complicated than you might expect – complicated enough that the film never actually answers that question. Owners talk about relocating cities to provide “quality of life” opportunities for their furbabies. One owner observes that cats are the only domesticated pets who have trained humans more than we have trained them – we cat-er to their needs and they — maybe — will deign to show us affection back. Or not. Depends.
There are funny profiles; emotional ones (a homeless man who rescued a dying kitten who essentially saved his life); offbeat ones. What they all have in common is men (youngish/older; butch/bookish; white collar/blue collar) in touch with their love of kitties for their smarts, their personalities, their survival skills, their independence.
Cat Daddies is sweet and quirky, more interested in mood and creating a safe space where this community can share stories and deal with their freaky side of felinephilia. How charming is that? … It’s the cat’s meow.
Now playing at the Angelika Film Center Dallas.
