Cat Person is not just fiction, relationships are messy

If you haven’t already read Cat Person, then I suggest you go online and do so lickety-split before reading on. Spoiler alert: keep going to the end, even if you do find yourself wondering what all the fuss is about.

Actually, “fuss” doesn’t begin to describe the response to this 7,000word short story, which appeared on the New Yorker website last weekend. It has not only become the magazine’s most-read piece of fiction this year, but has launched a cacophony of shoutily discordant opinions on social media.

Is it feminist? Anti-feminist? Toxic misandry? Unflinchingly honest or a bit of a let down? Written by Kristen Roupenian, Cat Person tells the tale of unlikeable 20-year-old Margot who dates and sleeps with equally unlikeable Robert, aged 34. The pair go on a date and kiss. He’s a terrible kisser. Much later, they are about to have sex and, even though she’s changed her mind, she stays silent because she doesn’t want to appear “spoilt and capricious”. Her choice. A bad one, it transpires. The sex is awful. She flees, blanks him and eventually he gets angry. And before you ask, he doesn’t murder her or threaten her. He just swears at her.

Compared to some of the datesfrom-hell I’ve endured, it’s on the tame side; the date who flashed me on the way back from the ladies, being asked to pay the eye-watering restaurant bill because my grand cru-guzzling suitor “forgot” his wallet, the chap who literally fell asleep on our first date, the one who took me home to see his ferret. An actual ferret, in a tiny ferret-sized sweater. I went out with this last one, briefly, mostly because of the ferret and the fact my friend said he looked like the lead singer of Curiosity Killed the Cat.

Talking of which, Cat Person is quite clever; a deceptively downbeat story that wears its complexity lightly. The militant brigade are up in arms about what they see as “coercive” sex, presumably because “Yes sometimes means no”. They seem unable to grasp the messiness of consensual relations, or that people sleep with one another for myriad reasons. Including a ferret. Just because a sexual encounter is a mistake doesn’t make it assault.

And just because a story is called Cat Person doesn’t mean there’s a cat.

Compared to some of the dates-from-hell I’ve endured, it’s on the tame side