Word: ailurophobia
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Investigators have never reached a consensus on ailurophobia-extreme fear of cats. Some postulate a traumatic childhood experience with felines, while others blame the cat's galvanizing stare, or disdain for affection, or even its slippery, furred coat and unfriendly, arching backbone. Traditional superstitions still exist: cats suck the breath from sleeping infants, sour fresh milk, forecast the phases of the moon and serve Satan. A black cat is bad luck. According to old belief, a cat, through necromancy or something even more unfathomable, has been given nine lives. Such Draculatic positions, however, are rare. Cats themselves often seem...
Your article on books promoting the cult of ailurophobia, the hatred or fear of cats [Sept. 21], reminds me of the Chinese proverb: "He whodislikes the cat was in his former life...
...feeding cost up to $1.8 billion a year, which is more than the defense budget of Brazil. Yet, deep in the American psyche, there is evidently a bristling resentment of Felis domestica. This has erupted in a litter of books that celebrate a new and fast-growing cult of ailurophobia (hatred or fear of cats...
...April and has headed the trade paperback bestseller list for twelve straight weeks. It is a collection of mordant and often macabre cartoons by English Artist Simon Bond, who is violently allergic to living cats but has no end of ingenious notions for recycling cadavers. The Charles Addams of ailurophobia, he sees deceased tabbies as admirable substitutes for more conventional objects ranging from anchors to wine holders (not to mention cat's cradles and cat-o'-ninetails). Bond's graphic suggestions have triggered a barrage of ailurophiliac mail charging the cartoonist and publisher with everything from obscenity...
...thing, since the triumph of Poland's Solidarity union movement, Polish jokes are out. For another, many people are being made aware of long-hidden resentment of the pampered pets and their golden-eyed contempt toward the humans privileged to support them. Pop Psychologist Joyce Brothers regards ailurophobia, at least in its literary form, as a harmless put-on. "If you get upset at this," she says, "you have too much emotional involvement in your pet." Harvey Mindess, an authority on the psychology of humor, sniffs: "101 Uses proves that there are a lot of ten-year-olds...