By Guardian - Eva Wiseman - Sun 29 Sep 2024 08.00 BST

A pet is a symbol of virtue, its happiness a test of our humanity. This year it’s also a marker of electability…

My friend Shay has acquired a cat. It started when her family got a kitten, but then the kitten attracted a stray, who entered the house and ate all the food, much like that awful tiger who came to tea. He’s a big guy, muscular, itchy, needy, and they took him to the vet, to discover he was unchipped. They put up posters, they asked online if neighbours had lost a cat. “Enjoy your new cat!” said the neighbours. The vet’s advice was not to feed it or pay it any attention. The cat shelter’s advice was to feed it and love it.

They compromised, with a bed in the shed and food outside. Foxes used the bed as a toy – the cat stoically remains at their window. Along the way, Shay’s young daughter has named it Mr Fish, a name both formal and disgusted. I have enjoyed my Mr Fish updates, not just because it’s very funny seeing my friend compelled to care for an animal that, to quote, “gives her the ick”, but because I am refreshed by the admission, in a time when our pets have come to define us, that our relationships with them can be… complicated.

My friend’s family got a kitten, but then the kitten attracted a stray…

I mean, I love my cat. I do – she’s cool and beautiful, but also, sorry, a prick. When we first got her, my eldest child was a toddler and I was unprepared for the realisation that what I was handing to my daughter was not simply a kitten but death itself. Not only because of the murders the cat would perform on mice and toilet rolls, but in her very brevity. She came with grief built in. My daughter, who has sobbed over the death of her sea monkeys, watches the cat constantly for signs of decline.

She has so far survived and, while she is delightful to me, she recently scratched a visiting baby’s head and typically meets my children’s attempts at affection with violence or disdain. And yet, as illustrated by the place of pets in the current American election, she is valuable to me for more reasons than warmth or entertainment – the act of caring for a cat or dog is seen as hard proof that I am a good person. I am relatable, I am kind, I am real. I have the capacity for love. Those that don’t, well… aren’t.

This summer an anonymous New York Magazine article titled “Why did I stop loving my cat when I had a baby?” went viral, enraging readers, with the editor finally posting: “The magazine does not condone harm to animals,” but decrying the “racist [and] misogynistic” comments made against the writer. Later that month, Lily Allen was vilified after revealing that she’d rehomed her dog after it ate her family’s passports – Peta published an open letter saying they were “appalled”, after which Allen said she’d received death threats. A pet is a symbol of virtue, its happiness a test of our humanity. This year it’s also a marker of electability.

Republican Kristi Noem ended her chances of becoming Trump’s vice-president when she revealed she’d shot and killed her pet dog, Cricket. JD Vance’s attempt to gain credibility by bringing his dog on the campaign trail backfired when people questioned whether he’d even met the animal before. All this after the interview where he said the US was being ruined by “childless cat ladies”, a phrase co-opted by Taylor Swift in her endorsement of Kamala Harris.

Then, after sneering at the left’s love of cats, the right spread lies that immigrants were eating American’s pets, attempting to dehumanise Haitian people by suggesting they don’t know the difference between the animals we eat and the ones we dress up in little outfits and call our babies. All this illuminates just how integral pets have become to our identities, how elevated their status.

Owning a pet today, it’s clear, has very little to do with the animal itself. Instead, like the choice to have children, the decision to own a pet is tied into all the stories we tell ourselves about who we want to be, stories derailed sometimes by nostalgia, stress and a human need to care.

Last year, the Pope declared that “dogs now sometimes take the place of children,” to which I’d add, actually, they are often even more beloved, even more special, as they are so much more simple to love, so devoted and soft and other. And, as shown by the death threats Lily Allen met, they are easier to advocate for than humans, too, as they don’t complicate matters by answering back. The reason the American right were able to make ripples with their lies about immigrants is that we had already imbued pets with such meaning that this horror story immediately resonated and spread.

Shay is fretting over Mr Fish. She doesn’t want to take responsibility for him, but she doesn’t want to let him perish either, in a cold suburban winter, bullied by foxes, the risk of choking on a KFC bone while her kitten enjoys dinner by the fire. Plus, now he has a name. I don’t know what advice to give her beyond the reminder that he is not a test or a symbol or a weapon. That sometimes a cat is just a cat.

Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on X @EvaWiseman