I had a strange exchange with Primo last night.
P: What’s the difference between a cat and a pussycat?
M: There is no difference. They are both just cats.
P: Wrong. A pussycat is a bad cat.
I’m not quite sure what to make of the fact that my four year-old has come to understand that pussy = evil. I don’t even know where to begin. Is this a fear of woman sort of thing or a misogyny sort of thing or just a misreading of the classic tale Puss in Boots? Either way, there’s no hope of me correcting him because I eschew the word “pussy” at all costs, in any circumstance where children may be present. Which is actually not as easy as one might think.
For instance, I was at the pediatrician’s office a few weeks ago, waiting for the doc to examine a strange series of bumps on Primo’s leg (turns out its nothing more than molluscum contagiosa. “Contaga-what?” you ask, likely feeling relieved you are reading this rather than hearing it as I sit across from you, my molluscum-ridden child by my side. It just means a wart, that’s all.) So I was there with both kids and we were waiting 15, 20 minutes, then 30 minutes, then 40, and by this point, we’d read every single children’s book in the waiting room and the examination room.
Except for one especially grimy and germ-infested book which has been buried under the others.
“Read this one, Mommy,” said my son, handing me a copy of “The Owl and the Pussycat.” So I read it, of course, but I had to steel myself every time that dastardly word came up. It wasn’t that I felt weird reading it to my kids, it was that I felt weird having other people listen to me read it to my kids, like a parent in the waiting room might hear just that one word, out of context and think, “What kind of a madwoman is this! Someone call Social Services!”
Because it wasn’t just like, ok, you’ve got an owl and a pussycat, and they have some adventures. Edward Lear was clearly working through some shit when he wrote this, because on the first page, the word “pussy” appears like five times, with no “cat” or any kind of suffix attached. You try reading this to your two young children in public:
'O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!'
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