Meet Benjamin Button, Taylor Swift’s cat and star of her Harris endorsement
Taylor Swift’s announcement Tuesday that she would vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election came in a social media post with a witty sign-off: “Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady.”
With that, the Swift-owned felines – Meredith Grey; Olivia Benson; and Benjamin Button, the latter seen accompanying Swift in her endorsement post – became an election issue.
The photo of Swift with Benjamin Button appeared to come from her 2023 Person of the Year photo shoot for Time magazine. His inclusion and her wording are a reference to Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance’s recently resurfaced comments dismissing Democrats as “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices they’ve made.”
In the remarks, made during a 2021 interview on Fox News’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Vance also said that lawmakers without children “don’t really have a direct stake” in the country’s future. The interview sparked outrage when it began recirculating in July, with Swift’s Time cover featuring Benjamin Button referenced by many seeking to reclaim the label at the time.
Swift’s cats are well known among her devoted fans. Benjamin Button – who shares a name with the backwards-aging character in the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story and 2008 film – is her newest. He was added to the household as a kitten after he appeared in the 2019 music video for the track “ME!” She said at the time that he came from an organization that “tries to get cute kittens adopted by putting them in commercials and stuff,” according to Elle magazine.
In behind-the-scenes footage from the “ME!” music video posted on her YouTube account, Swift asks of the kitten, “Can I have him?,” and is open-mouthed when she is told he is available.
“He’s just purring so loud – Dad, you’ve got to hold this kitten,” she said, handing it to her father to coo over. “I know kittens are cute, but that kitten’s special,” she said later to Brendon Urie of Panic! at the Disco, who features in the song.
In the music video, Urie hands the kitten to a delighted Swift after she rejects flowers and jewelry. It also features her other two cats, whom she refers to as their “young daughters.”
Her first cat, Meredith Grey, was named for the fictional doctor and lead character on the medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy,” and her second, Olivia Benson, after the detective of the same name on the long-running “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” She told Rolling Stone that she named them after “strong, complex, independent women.” (Mariska Hargitay, who plays Benson, later named a cat “Karma,” a Swift track.)
All three cats make regular appearances on her social media and are referenced in her song lyrics, and have become cult figures in their own right for Swifties. Meredith and Olivia make a cameo on a T-shirt worn by Ryan Reynolds in “Deadpool 2,” and Olivia also appeared in a Diet Coke ad with Swift in 2014. Swift even told Time she signed on to act in the movie “Cats” because she was “so obsessed” with her pets.
Swift’s post, uploaded shortly after the presidential debate on ABC, had more than 4 million likes in about two hours. It was the latest celebrity retort to Vance’s “childless cat lady” remark, adding to comments by Jennifer Aniston, Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah.