Hiss & Tell: Cat Behavior and Beyond

The Secret Lives of Historical Cats With Jodie Stewart

• Kristiina Wilson • Season 3 • Episode 36

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A rescue cat walks into a historian’s life and suddenly the archive looks different. That’s the spark behind this wide-ranging conversation with cat historian Jodie Stewart, who explores how felines traveled with colonists, curled up in family photos, comforted soldiers, and later became flashpoints in conservation and culture wars. If you’ve ever wondered why cats provoke such strong feelings — or why they’re often missing from national stories — this is a tour through the ships, letters, laws, and myths that shaped Australia’s relationship with its most polarizing companion animal.

We dig into the big questions: competing theories of how cats reached Australia and the DNA that points to European origins; the Victorian-era “cult of the cat” and how British tastes crossed oceans; and the moment Federation recast native fauna as national symbols while introduced animals fell down a perceived hierarchy. Jodie unpacks the 1990s Great Cat Debate — cat curfews, containment, registration, household caps — and the warlike language that still colors public policy. Along the way, we meet Trim, the seafaring cat immortalized by Matthew Flinders, and discover archival glimpses of veterans holding their cats as they recover, proof that emotion belongs in the historical record.

This episode invites you to see cats as historical agents — observers and participants whose presence reveals how identity, ecology, and policy intertwine. We talk evidence vs. rhetoric, why lethal control keeps failing, and how better language and community-centered strategies could improve both conservation outcomes and public trust. Whether you’re a cat lover, cat skeptical, or simply curious about Australian history, you’ll leave with a richer sense of how private affections shape public narratives and why love itself has a history.

If this resonates, tap follow, share the episode with a friend, and leave a quick rating or review to help others find the show. Your thoughts matter—tell us how cats show up in your family’s story.

Kristiina Wilson:

Today we have a podcast Jodi Stewart within now on the cat historians. Join us as we explore the connection between humans and cats throughout Australia's past, uncovering stories of companionship, cultural significance, and learning about the unique role that cats have played in shaping the history of the planet. Whether you're a cat lover or a history enthusiast, this episode's got something for you. Hi, and welcome to another episode of Hits and Tel. I'm your host, Christina Wilson, and with me today is Jodi Stewart, cat historian. Welcome, Jodi. So tell me a little bit about yourself, who you are, where you are, your education, what you do, all of that jazz.

Jodie Stewart:

So, as you said, my name's Jodi Stewart. I'm a cat historian. I am located on the east coast of Australia in the state of New South Wales, right down the far south coast, about an hour or so from the Victorian border, in a lovely little seaside town called Marin Villa. So I grew up in this area in the Beagle Valley. Born in 1975. I was 50 this year, big milestone birthday. When we wrote that, thank you. I studied as a mature age student. I went back to university in my 30s and did a Bachelor of Arts degree with the intention of being a primary school teacher. I was halfway through sort of halfway through my degree when I discovered a love of history and English literature. And I thought that I'd like to sort of concentrate on that subject area. So I did an honours degree in history and I was awarded a first class honours, which is fantastic, and then was encouraged by my honour supervisor to do a PhD, and I did a PhD in history. Now at that time, I was interested in questions around the impacts of historical storytelling and particularly through community-led public history projects. So in my local area, there's a public history project led by the Indigenous community in Eden, which is a town very close to where I live, called the Bundy and Way Project. And I was interested in questions around okay, so what are the impacts of the storytelling through this project on predominantly non-Indigenous white settler peoples? And that was sort of the focus of my PhD because I was very, very interested in the politics of history, in the impacts of historical storytelling, uh, and what that meant to us as individuals, as community members, as local people, but also as sort of national citizens as well. So I've always been interested in questions of representation and questions of history making. And while I was doing my PhD also, I was working as a casual sessional, so tutoring in various Australian history subjects and in European modern history subjects as well. And it was through that sort of engagement with students and lecturers that I started to become also interested in animal histories. I I found them profound and so interesting as well. But the big turning point for me was in 2000 and around 2019 when my youngest daughter brought home a rescue cat. I'd always been a dog person. I grew up around dogs. I am still a dog person, as well as a cat person, an animal person, I think. And I've always been a dog person. My maternal grandfather always had dogs, and I loved my maternal grandfather. And I grew up with a love of dogs from him and from my family. And suddenly I had this cat, this beautiful little cat. And this was an interesting time in my life, but also uh in the broader community because we just it was in the lead up to a fairly uh long drought here in Australia. We had catastrophic bushfires in 2019 and 2020, and then we we came out of these catastrophic bushfires and went straight into COVID. Um so she was with me during this time. And also in my own and sort of personal life, I was starting my perimenopausal journey. My adult children were leaving home. There was sort of this confluence of emotions, and I had this beautiful little cat. She'd follow me from room to room. When I was feeling a bit anxious, I'd lie down and she'd come and cuddle in the crook of my arm. And I would just become so interested and confused about this love. I felt this immense, profound love for this tiny little cat. I'd felt love for dogs all my life, but this was something different. Right. So overwhelming. Um, and I fretted like fretted about this cat like she was my own child. And we bonded. Um, and I mean, you know, cats, uh, your listeners were no cats. It's this delicate sort of interaction that happens every day. You negotiate your space. We were doing this in the background of sort of compounding traumas and my perimenopausal journey, and we bonded. And as a historian, then I became interested in questions of, well, am I the only person that's healed this way? Um, what did what did cat love look like in the past? Um, and I started to read more about cats in our own history and thought, I think there's an opportunity there to really make a contribution to the exploration of cats in Australia's past and to really think deeply about those questions as well. So that sort of led me on my journey into the archives to start searching for cats because I was particularly interested in, yes, answering my own personal questions about this profound love I was feeling. But I was interested more broadly in the human and cat relationship in Australia's past. What did that look like? I was also interested in also in sort of big national stories and you know, why cats were missing from that story and what would happen if we put them, put them back in there.

Kristiina Wilson:

First, I want to ask you, because you know, I read um on your on your Substack that you said that when you tell people that you're a cat historian, um, some people even call that work silly. So why do you think that some people dismiss cat history and what does that say about kind of how we view animals and particularly cats in general?

Jodie Stewart:

Okay, so uh I will first this by saying that in academia, the study of animals, if I said to an academic, you know, I'm studying cats in Australian history, I probably wouldn't get the shock reaction that I do from others because animal history, the animal studies has been a study of exploration in the academy for a couple of decades now. And the field of history has expanded exponentially from its beginning, you know, in the late 19th, early 20th century, when history grew alongside the nation state, and it was basically a way of communicating the nation and telling stories of the nation. So history in its inception was about political leaders and political machinations. It certainly wasn't about individual workers or animals. So the field of history has grown since its inception. And, you know, so those subjects of history, those historical agents that were left out, are now more commonly written about, which is very, very important because history matters. And history helps us to understand who we are, who we were, who we are, and who we could be. So history is very, very important. So people understood that I was a historian and that I had a PhD in history. And certain subjects I think people seem to think that the history discipline is very austere, very serious, and it is, it absolutely is, um, and it should be. And I'm hoping through my essays on Substack and and also through my book to convince people that the study of cats in Australia's past is a very serious subject of historical exploration. But when I talk to people about when they ask me, you know, what are you doing now? And I say, Well, I'm actually researching the history of cats in Australia's past, I get a range of responses from wildly excited to kind of apathetic, to the roll-y stuff, to people saying, Well, that's dangerous, you shouldn't be romanticizing cat. Um, I don't we'll probably get to the topic of why that is something that someone would say in Australia. So it is a range of responses. And I think it's because for many people, if I said to them, I'm studying, you know, the microchondral DNA of mainland quote-unquote feral cats, people would go, okay, cats and science, yes, cats and history.

Kristiina Wilson:

I think um, I don't for some reason I think cats are challenging to a lot of people. And and you did write about this a little bit in that the one essay on your Substack about um your sister, I think, who hates cats. Yeah. I don't know why, I mean, I have a lot of ideas about why cats get picked on over other animals, but even when I was doing my graduate studies, I wasn't allowed to work with cats. I had to work with dogs. Or, you know, people could work with elephants or they could work with dolphins, but I it was not allowed to work with cats. There's something about the cat that can really rub people the wrong way. And I don't know if it's the independence or the relationship that women have with this animal or the fact that they won't, they're not pack animals, so they won't be governed and kind of dominated in the same way that dogs will be, or what the deal is, but people have a very strong reaction to cats that they don't have, in my experience, to other companion animals that we have. Yeah, that's really interesting, isn't it?

Jodie Stewart:

And I think it's all of those things and definitely their relationship with women, because often, you know, connection to women undervalues things straight away, particularly in patriarchal societies like ours. And I think that's also you add in that social media and the internet, and cats on the internet have become funny and quirky and uh and I and and part of the sort of popular culture that emerges from the internet. And a lot of people don't see popular culture as a serious study, as a serious subject for academic or any sort of rigorous research. So I I think it's a combination of all of those things, but that's to our detriment, right? Because I think that um as I as I hope to demonstrate in the work that I've done already, but also my book, that this is a very serious subject of exploration, that our relationship with cats can tell us so much about ourselves as individuals, as national citizens and subjects. And I think it's immensely valuable as a subject of inquiry. I agree.

Kristiina Wilson:

Immensely pleasurable and enjoyable and all of the things. Absolutely. So do you want to talk a little bit about cats arriving in Australia, how they got there, what their earliest roles were, what you've discovered in your research, um, what they have been in Australia? Sure, sure.

Jodie Stewart:

Look, there have a couple of schools of thought around how cats made it to the continent that came to be called Australia by the British. So one of those schools of thought was that cats arrived here via uh Indonesia. So they came in through the north, they were traded with indigenous people, Macassan fishermen traded them with indigenous people, and that's how they found their way to you. Uh there's another school of thought that suggests that 16th and 17th century Dutch and Portuguese explorers that were shipwrecked on the west coast of Australia, in Western Australia, that those cats uh escaped into the into the Great Beyond as part of these shipwrecks. So that's another sort of school of thought. So there's another school of thought that they came across the land bridge in Gondwana, you know, thousands of years ago. Now, there were a couple of studies conducted in 2015 that looked at the microchondrial DNA of mainland Australian cats, and they concluded that the DNA was mainly European. So from that research, they sort of concluded that cats have most probably only been here for the last 200 or so years, which places their sort of beginnings with coinciding with European British colonization in 1788. So we know, because of what we find in the archives, we know that cats arrived here most probably uh as ships' cats, because ships cats were very, very common in the 18th century when the First Fleet arrived, intruded onto Indigenous land in 1788. So we know that ships cats would have probably been there. Cats were also listed on the manifest, kittens were also listed on the manifest on First Fleet vessels. But also, because of the wonderful letters of the Reverend Richard Johnson, who was traveling on one of the storeships of the First Fleet, the Golden Grove, in his letters, he was writing a letter back to his dear friend Henry Fricker back in England. And in his letters, he talks about his two beloved cats, Mr. Tom Puss and Miss Puss. So we know from those letters that cats arrived as companion animals. And from the readings of these letters, you can see that he loved these cats. They were playful. And you've got to remember as well that this voyage from Portsmouth in uh England over to this continent that would have been very, very foreign and strange, that these cats would have provided companionship and entertainment. And the Reverend Johnson talks about how he he's being entertained, he's being kept entertained by these two cats. So we know that from the records that that that at least two cats came over as companion animals, and that they that they most likely arrive with successive waves of colonization as well. So cats came as companion animals, cats were all also came as ships' cats. And colonization as as a process, British imperialism, you know, we saw the movement of people, objects around the world. They just didn't bring their material objects, they also brought their ideas. So they brought their ideas about cats with them as well. So we have the movement of animals um across the globe. Also, so on the on the first fleet, uh they talk about the cold grove being the Noah's art. There were many, many, many animals brought to the continent to sustain the colonists at that time. And dogs, cats, goats, horses, cows, geese. Um so you have, you know, these movements of animals across the globe, including cats and and ideas about cats. So Catherine Hughes, in her very excellent book, Catland, talks about um this period in history, roughly in the later stages of the Industrial Revolution to before the start of the First World War, where England was in the midst of a cat obsession. And this was informed by artists like Lewis Wayne, which many cat lovers may be familiar with, but also a sort of coterie of middle middle class cat breeders which formed these cat fancies. So in newspapers in Australia, they talk about this at the time as the cult of the cat. So this is also informing our relationship with Australia in Australia about cats as well, because we are a British colony. So we also see the rise of the cat fancy and cat shows and cat breeding. There is a lot written about cats at the time. So we're very much informed by trends and cultural phenomena back in Britain. So, but over time, of course, the landscape is very, very different to the mother country. And cats adapt and change very differently than than they do in um, and of course, the people that came here changed as well because of the landscape, also. So you see the fortunes of cats sort of changing um at the turn of the 20th century. So, you know, you don't see as much talk about the cult of the cat, although cat fantasies still exist, we still have cat shows, we still have people that very much love cats. But at the turn of the century federation, so the British colonies form a federated commonwealth, things things start to change because Australia is no longer a disparate group of British colonies. It's come together in a Commonwealth, it's starting to grapple with what its identity will look like as a newly federated nation. And as part of sort of grappling with that identity, native animals are sort of co-opted into become symbols of this sort of Australian exceptionalism and uniqueness, and so-called sort of introduced animals sort of sort of drop away. Um, and a sort of Nicholas Smith, who's an anthropologist, talks about a sort of hierarchy of animals starts to emerge at this time, and cats start to sort of dangle off the very lowest rung of this hierarchy. Why do you think that is? Uh I think, well, I think there's a few things. I think that as I mentioned, cats, when they came to Australia, they adapted very differently to the ecology here. So the ecology in Australia is very, very different to the ecology in North America. Obviously, cats have very few natural predators here. So in America, in parts of North America, you've got coyotes and mountain and lions, and so cats can be predated on by these apex predators, and their numbers obviously can be kept low because of this. But in Australia, that's not necessarily the case. So I think that as numbers started to increase, and also in cities as well, in urban areas as well, they see the proliferation of numbers in particularly arid parts of the country, but also proliferations of numbers in urban areas. Some start to see this overabundance of cat numbers as a problem. So I I think there's that, and then they start to link that sort of problem of the overabundance of cats to particular ecological problems that start to emerge in in the 20th century as well. I mean, obviously, when European colonists came to Australia, there was massive land clearing, there was all sorts of ecological environment violence meter out to the environment, but they start to see, and we had things called climatization societies, right? So where uh mainly sort of middle class British colonists wanted to recreate European and British uh environments in Australia. So they brought over. So yes, so they brought over um rabbits, uh foxes, also animals from America were brought in via um acclimatization societies because they saw the Australian environment as as being in deficit, as being defective, as something they needed fixing. And they saw that they could fix it via bringing animals in from other places. Right. So it was in the later part of the 19th century that many people started to talk about well, I don't think this was the fix that you thought it was going to be. Because at that stage, and one of the big topics of conversation in the later part of the 19th century was around the so-called rabbit problem. So w wild rabbits were rejected were released in in large numbers in Barton Park in Victoria in the mid eight in the mid 1800s. And of course, you you introduce wild rabbits, they love it, they multiply, and suddenly you have more rabbits than You than you you thought you were going to have to manage on your lovely English style path. So rabbits become a quote unquote problem. Other introduced animals also start to proliferate. Some, of course, just up and die because they they cannot adapt to this new environment, but many thrive. So it's it's at the sort of 19th century, turn of the 20th century that discussions are starting to have, particularly amongst naturalists, ornithologists, and we see the emergence of ornithological unions as well at this time. They start discussing this issue of so-called introduced species and their impact on the environment. So I think because all these conversations are being had in the public domain, cats become the big baddie and they continue to be the big baddie well into the 20th century and even today.

Kristiina Wilson:

I know Australia for sure has that problem with especially the idea of feral cats and the debate around how to handle them, which I want to talk about. But I know that you've noted that Australia and America share a lot because we're both settler colonial nations. Do you see similar patterns in how both countries have shaped and been shaped by Delius?

Jodie Stewart:

Yeah, so just a bit of a bit of context. So for people that may not be aware, so Australia and America, as you say, are settler colonial nations. So a settler colony is settlers that come to stay, uh, which is so you have you have colonies of exploitation, like India, for example, where the British arrived, exploited the resources and the people, and then after left. But you have colonies of what Patrick Wolf calls extermination, where settler colonists come to stay. And Patrick Wolf also talks about the logic of elimination that underpins settler colonial nations. So that is something that Australia and America share. They share a history of British colonization and they are both settler colonial nations. Settler colonial nations. So as I mentioned earlier, we have very different ecologies. So I think that sort of informed how our sort of differing relationship with cats and the conversations around conservation and cats has been a little bit different, I think. But we certainly share that history. And on top of that, I think a lot of settler colonial nations are grappling with how to tell the story of their beginning as a colony. Australia, I think, shares that history with America as well. In terms of how do we how do we grapple with this very dark, violent history and how do we tell it? And this is where history matters, right? Because this is part of our national identity. This is a part of how we um think about ourselves and how we kind of move forward in the future. Uh and you will notice when authorit authoritarian governments, the first things that they try to do is that they try to rewrite history. And they often start with those origin stories, right? So this is something we share. And cats are there in the mix with this also. But I think but I think something that's also sort of universal is that love, right? Uh, you know, Australian troops in World War I would have sh would have shared trenches with American troops, and they would have received the same beautiful, uh, fairy feline love as Australian troops. So I think that's something that we essentially share as human beings. This deep connection that we can make with with cats and other animals.

Kristiina Wilson:

Can you talk a little bit then about the debate around feral cats and how they're being handled in Australia?

Jodie Stewart:

Okay, so our solution to controlling, quote unquote, feral cat numbers and the so-called introduced species more broadly is to kill them. That's that is the solution. And that has been the solution since the beginning. Uh, you know, we've poisoned, we've trapped, we've skinned, we've enacted all sorts of abominations on cats, but also foxes, wild dogs, uh, horses. We have what they call wild brumbies here in the highlands in Australia. There's been raging debates around how to control and manage their numbers, because of course, alpine regions in Australia, just like much of Australia's ecology and ecologies all over the world, are very, very fragile. So there's been lots of debates around that. But of course, the biggest body of all is the cat. And these debates can be hugely divisive. So in the 1990s, and I write about this in my book because I think this is the this is the time when the sort of turning point around the cat debate became particularly heated. And it's a particularly interesting time, I think, in Australia's history also. Nicholas Smith calls it the Great Cat Debate. So at this time in the 1990s, um, there's discussions around, the discussion turns from not just quote unquote feral cats, but how to manage domestic cats, so-called domestic cats, and particularly free roaming domestic cats, but also what they call stray cats. So this is an interesting kind of shift in the discussion. And obviously, you know, discussions around ferals, domestic cats, and strays were bubbling around in the public domain. But in the 90s, this starts to become a sort of government initiative to start to think about how they're going to manage the cats in their midst, if you like. So the media kind of starts to portray it as a war. So, you know, you've got the cat lovers on one side and you've got the conservationists on the other side. So it starts to become quite heated and it starts to play out in the media, but not just in the media, it also plays out in schools. You've suddenly got school kids debating on how to manage um cat populations, you've got, you know, novelists writing about it. So it's it's front and center in the minds of many Australians at this time. You know, you've got local councils discussing how they might control, manage domestic cats, for example. They start talking about curfews, and they start talking about cat containment, they start talking about mandatory registration, all these types of things. How would you give cats a curfew? Okay, so what? Okay, so and the curfew tends to be one of the most controversial things, other than obviously, you know, wholesale slaughters of cats. Yeah. But uh curfews tend to be quite a controversial thing. For example, in the 1990s, there was a community called Sherbrooke in Victoria. They were the first to bring in the cat curfew. So you would bring your cat in um at around six o'clock, and then you wouldn't let it out, say, for example, till six o'clock in the morning. So between that period and usually at night, you would bring your cat in, it would be somersault in the home for the whole night, and then you could let it out again in the morning. So, yeah, this idea of having cats also contained in catering um and in homes is also being discussed as well.

Kristiina Wilson:

I'm really stuck on this curfew. I'm sorry. So, like how if you have an indoor-outdoor cat, which we don't have, I know we have very different ideas in America and then in England and probably in Australia about what is the best welfare for cats. And and I I'm sure that that is also based on the amount of predators, the natural predators that we have. And and like you noted where we live here in Connecticut, we have bears, we have coyotes, we have bobcats, we have raccoons, all different kinds of animals that will take out cats in addition to cars. But I can't imagine being able to tell a cat, okay, curfews at six, you know, you've got to come home and be inside. So, number one, I I guess you could train them over time if if you know how to train, but also is there then a consequence? Like, were they going out? Were there teams of people going out to do fines or shooting cats who were out past this time? Or was the thinking that cats who are out at night are causing more damage than cats who are out during the day, which, like, if you're worrying about birds, that doesn't make any sense because they're not killing birds at night. I just have so many follow-up questions, and probably you don't have the answers, but I'm so perplexed by the idea of a curfew for cats. I could do a whole episode on that. I have so many questions. I'm sorry, you like really I'm like in this niche now.

Jodie Stewart:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I could say, yeah, as you said, I can't answer all of those questions because I don't know. I it's some of the thinking was as you said, you know, that cats are doing most of their predation at night. So we bring them in at night. It's also sort of uh more it's today, it's sort of couched in the rhetoric of we care about cats, you know. We, you know, we we we want to look after their welfare as well as sort of protecting native species that they may predate on. So, you know, we want to keep them in and, you know, make sure that cats are being well looked after. And then they start talking about, well, you know, a cat that lives indoors, an indoor cat lives longer than an outdoor cat. So if you keep your cat indoors and you're gonna have your cat for longer, it's gonna be this wonderful fat, happy cat, right? So this is this tends to be some of the thinking in the 1990s as well, but it does become really, really controversial. So that's right, how do you police a cat curfew? Because at the moment they're talking about cat curfews in the city of Melbourne, for example. So how does a local council police this? As you say, do they have designated cat curfew wardens or rangers that go around and make knock on doors and make sure that cats are so the onus is really on, you know, so-called owners to ensure that that cats are squirreled away in their homes in the in the nighttime hours. So it becomes a really hard one. And I think this is why the debate continues to kind of rage around this as well. Also, there's also in the 1990s discussions around putting caps on cat numbers. So in some communities, in some local councils, there's discussions around, well, you can only have two cats. Each household can only have two cats. And this also becomes really, really controversial. And you see people writing into then, you know, their local newspaper going, Well, you know, I have four cats or I have six cats. So how am I to make this terrible decision about, you know, getting rid of two of my cats or getting rid of four of my cats, or all of my six cats bring me love, joy, and companionship. So these things are playing out in the media, right? So, and they become hugely, hugely divisive. But it's not only politicians and local councils and local people having these conversations, ecologists start to enter the chat as well. And there are some ecologists at the time that are saying, hey, wait a minute, the evidence is just not there. Do we know for a fact that because all these big, scary numbers are being thrown around as well, and you still hear it today, you know, that that cats kill millions and millions of native species every year. Um, and they're big and scary numbers, right? Um and at the same time also, this idea that you and there was this conservationist that was in in the news a lot in the 1990s. His name was John Wandsley, he was the proprietor of Earth Sanctuaries, he owned a very vast property in South Australia, in the Hills District of South Australia. He was looking to bring back native species, both plant and animal, to this, this area. He was saw that the the biggest sort of hurdle and challenge to reinvigorating these areas was introduced species like cats and foxes. So he saw cats and foxes as being the big baddies, right? And he very infamously wore a cat-in-hat to the 1991 South Australian Tourism Awards because he wanted to make a point about the fact that he could not shoot cats on his property. He brought another property in the Malle-Murray district in South Australia, he was also regenerating. And he was he was a bit angry with the South Australian government because he couldn't shoot cats on this property. So to make a point about this, he wore a catskin hat to um the South Australian Tourism Boards, it hits the local news, it hits the national news, the international news pick it up as well. So, you know, you have this happening also, and Wandsley famously also said that you can't love a cat and love your country. So this idea, so this idea that um your sense of Australianness is inextricably linked to the conservation of native species um and the removal of cats. So this is sort of in the mix as well. Um it's a very, very, very interesting time um when all these sort of debates are playing out. I I I I mean, I haven't looked too much, I I obviously keep keep an eye on uh current sort of discussions around uh particularly sort of government initiatives around um feral cats. I haven't looked too deeply into it. But uh in 2023, the then in Minister of Environment and Water, Tanya Plebisek, she announced a war on cats. So the language is very combative. And again, sort of trotting out very big, sort of scary numbers and statistics and you know, using the sort of language of of war and cats are evil. Um so, you know, and which is which prompts people like Christina Vesk from the New South Wales Cat Protection Society to say, hey, this language is not helpful, and all it does is further malign um and denigrate cats and communicate to the public that they're of lesser value, right? Um, so I don't see a lot of difference between what's being said today by politicians um and some in the media about cats and what was being said, you know, 30 years ago. It just seems to be a continuation of that sort of demonizing of uh feral cats, which is not particularly useful. And I mean, I think, and this this idea that, and I'm not an ecologist, so I'm probably not going to get into the discussion around how to manage feral cat populations, but certainly uh for for many hundreds of years, our approach has been to just poison them or trap them or kill them, which has not worked. Um, so we don't seem to learn from history.

Kristiina Wilson:

No, and it's it's funny, this is just reminding me so much of how cats were also denigrated around, like honestly, throughout time, but around the plague times when especially women who survived the plague would then be thought of as witches and they would be pilloried for it. And it was especially women who had cats were considered witches, or you know, they had they had done some kind of magical spell, but in fact, it was often because they had cats who were killing the rats, who had the fleas, who had the plague, right? And but it it just this is a constant chain of misinformation and dislike of cats and their ties to women and their emotional. It's just there's something that's always going on throughout the history of time where people in power don't like that. This is an emotionally laden animal that people become attached to. And then there's this language that, like, often the cat and then often the person attached to them must be destroyed. And I just find it so perplexing. And you're exactly like that we never learn. It's continuing to be done.

Jodie Stewart:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And of course, they're also like to draw on Nicholas Smith again, he talks about how at the time in the 90s, when these debates were rage-eaten, the language that was used to discuss cats was very, very similar to the language used to discuss new migrants and immigrants. So Australia, you know, we were founded on policies of immigration restriction. And we continue to have very racist, very angst sort of debates around immigration in this country. Um so in the 1990s, we had a very infamous political party called the One Nation Party. It's still with us today. Uh and the leader of the One Nation Party at the time, the 19 in 1991, in her maiden speech to Parliament, she very infamously stated, and I quote, Australia's at risk of being swamped by Asians. Um and also in the media at the time, and you still see this today, uh, there's discussions around waves of of migrants and being overwhelmed by migrants. And, you know, that somehow, and and particular migrants as well, let's get this straight. So, you know, obviously people of colour and migrants from non-European countries, uh and cats are seen as as as sort of uh are excluded from from the nation. Um and he sort of sees that this is in the mix as well, alongside, as you say, those sort of deeply historical ideas about cats and their relationship to women, their kind of relationship to evil and demons and witchcraft and you know, the sort of demonic femininity, those types of things all underpin our thinking and our relationship about cats in Australia. Boy.

Kristiina Wilson:

It's so much to unpack. And I'm also curious when you go and you do your research, like how do you, you know, cats aren't leaving, they're not leaving letters behind, they're not, you know, at least as you know, as far as we know. How how are you actually finding how do you find them in the archives? Like what kind of traces do you find of cats other than like what you mentioned that they're actually being recorded in the ship's passenger logs? Like when you go to do your research, how do you find cats?

Jodie Stewart:

Well, I mean, as sort of Catherine Hughes states in her book, Catland, they don't often leave traces. And you have to search for them in sort of unlikely places. I I mean, I think it's the everywhere of cats, right, that that really interested me. So, and I talk about this in my book and in my essays, that cats were everywhere. So they were the subject of photography. So people took family photos and propped their cat up on a chair. But they also photobombed, which I think is also interesting. So, for example, when photographs were taken of new recruits at the Broadmeadows military training camp 1914, here's a cat curled up in the corner behind these baby-faced soldiers. And I think that's really interesting. Cats were everywhere, but of course they're not coming up to shake your paw and tell you all about the life that they lived in the past. So you've got to, and as a historian, we need to place these artifacts within the historical context. So we need to think about well, what was happening at the time? What are the social, cultural, economic forces that informed the taking of this photograph that would have would have informed this young soldier to be happy to, you know, patch a cat on his knee and have his photo taken. You know, so we have to think about those things and and put them in the historical context. This really kind of fleshes out the story of cats and humans and and the human and cat cat relationship. So yeah, you can I mean, it's interesting because I've been, excuse me, I've been hugely. Assisted by digital archives, right? Because I live in a regional part of Australia. I'm a fair distance from physical libraries. So I've relied a lot on huge, big, wonderful databases like Trove in Australia. We've got a a huge, humongous archive called Trove. It's got millions of names and items in it, including lots and lots of newspapers and photographs and government gazettes and magazines and all these things. Oh nice. So when you when you search cats into this massive fantastic archive, you get millions of hits. And sometimes you're overwhelmed because there is so much. So you have to start thinking about well, what am I actually looking for? What what is it that what cats do want coming up to me and introducing themselves, if you like? So in that sense, I found that bit a bit more difficult than actually trying to find them. I had so many cats. I had so many, so many cats. And I think that's what impelled my research, right? Because when I when I started, you know, I had this big love affair and still have this big love affair with my cat go and see their critical cats in the archives. They were, you know, newsers to Australia's creatives, like novelists and sculptors and painters, you know, and some of Australia's, you know, most well-liked and well-loved kind of national figures had cat companions, you know. One of our national balladiers that wrote very evocatively about the bush called Henry Lawson. He had a cat. He wrote about cats. So suddenly, you know, cats are everywhere. And I have to start to think, well, what does this mean? And how can I form this into a story about this love affair that I'm seeing in the archives? So, yes. I had too many cats.

Kristiina Wilson:

Well, that's a good sounds like my daily life. I've got 19 in the house right now. But does that bring you to your foot first book, which is coming out in 2026? Is that kind of coming from all that research or is that an offshoot into something totally different? Do you want to talk a little bit?

Jodie Stewart:

That okay, so what is that is the uh so I have so when I started this, I had no I had hopes that I would one day write a book. It's always kind of been on my bucket list. But I knew that securing a publishing contract wasn't an easy thing to do. You don't have publishers just coming up to you and saying, hey, I didn't want to write a book. Um but as it happened, that happened to me. And so um Harper Pollins uh approached me, uh, because they heard along um the Great Vine that I was doing this research on cats in Australia, and they offered the opportunity for me to publish a book. And I was like, absolutely. Wow. So and I guess at the time, because I was um I was just doing a little bit of research here and there, you know, dipping my toe in the water if you like. So it really forced me to kind of focus in and think about the story that I wanted to tell and really think very seriously about these questions that I had kind of rumbling around in my head, to sit down and go, okay, I have these questions about cats and Australian national identity. I have these questions about emotion and the emotion that cats bring and the importance of that. And I have these questions about cats' contribution to the national project. So let's really sit down and hone in on them and start thinking about how that I can address them through my archiving research. Yeah, so it's coming out in 2026, which is next year, in June of next year. So essentially it is a love story. And I say that I've written it because I often when I tell people that I'm writing a book, again, sometimes I get the rolly eyes and the the shock. But generally they're like, wow, that's great. So um, you know, and if they're if they're uh not cat lovers, which which shocks me, why aren't you a cat lover? They say, Oh, well, you know, is that book for me? That's kind of their question. And I sort of say, look, this is a book for people with an interest in history, interest in Australian history. I've written it for you, but I've also written it for cat lovers and for all the cats. Because, you know, I w I hope that cat lovers in particular come away with the understanding that their love is valid and it's important. Um, but that love also has a history and that's important too. And that they come away with the understanding that, you know, their love is valid, their love is important, we've always loved cat. Also, I think that I hope they come away with the understanding that love has a history, that that it is informed by all these big cultural, social, and economic uh processes. But I also hope that um, because I think cat lovers will love it, they will. But I also hope to, but I also hope to bring other readers to my pages, you know, the cat curious perhaps, or the apathetic, or the dog lovers that love to tell me that they are not cat people. I don't know why, but they do. I I hope that they read it and I hope that they walk away with an appreciation of the role that cats played in Australia's social, political, and and cultural life. And that cats were indeed a part of Australia's rich, you know, complex history. Because we often hear about, you know, the dogs that made Australia. And there's actually a book called The Dogs That Made Australia, right? So we often hear about, you know, we often hear about dogs as being nation builders and part of national projects. We hear about, we all we also often hear about, you know, horses being part of, you know, the Australian National Project. But we often don't hear about, we don't hear the story of cats in Australia in that way. We don't see them part of um the nation. You know, as as I've discussed with my conversation with you, Christina, we see them as other to the nation. Um, we don't include them um in our national imaginary, in our national stories. And I think that's to our detriment because in the book there are so many stories of people that love cats, of people like Daniel McGee, who was a World War I veteran convalescing in the Red Cross uh convalescent home in North Sydney, who was photographed with his cat Sadie, who's holding this cat close and tight. And he talked about how this cat sat by his side when he was ill, gravely ill, you know, and one of our very powerful, very enduring, very emotive myths of origin is the myth of Gallipoli, right? Um, many myth makers and national storytellers uh suggest that the nation was formed on the beach at Gallipoli in World War I when the AIF uh landed there. Um, and and that the soldiers that participated uh are part of this kind of Australian exceptionalism, this bravery, this sacrifice, um, ingenuity. And yes, there were all those things, but that story in particular, that dominant sort of story, only gives us a one-dimensional image of these soldiers and individuals that return from war broken psychologically, physically, spiritually. Um, and I think, you know, this story of this World War I veteran who lived through a catastrophic war, global war, here he is with this cat that he loves. And I think that's returning his humanity to him. So, and that is why I think these stories are so very, very important. And I often come back to a statement by Stephen Murray Smith. Now, interestingly, Stephen Murray Smith, Australian writer, editor, researcher, he rescued uh a manuscript from the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich in London. Now, this manuscript was written by Matthew Flinders, who we venerate at a door here in Australia. We have statues erected to him, we have streets named after him, we have universities named after him. He was a cartographer, he circumnavigated the continent between 1801 and 1803, and who sat beside him on this voyage but a cat named Trim. Now, Trim very tragically disappeared while he and Flinders were imprisoned on the island of Mauritius. And because of this very tragic event, Flinders was impelled to write a biographical tribute to the memory of Trim. Now, this manuscript sat in the Maritime Museum for many, many years until Stephen Murray Smith found it and published it for a whole new audience. Now, he said of this biographical tribute that, and I quote, it tells us much about his personality and his humanity, perhaps more than the rest of his published work does in total. And I I think, and that, and and that statement really kind of stays with me because I think that our love of cats, our relationship with cats can tell us a lot about our humanity. So here's this very, very, very, very famous British naval officer. You know, we've been able to glean greater insights about this man um and his life, and in particular his emotional world. And I think, you know, my book is about love and about emotions. And I think that cats do give us an insight into our emotional world. Um and I and I think that's profoundly important, and I think it adds depth and richness to our national stories.

Kristiina Wilson:

I agree. And I think all of that is so interesting. I cannot wait to read your book. Um, if you if people listening to this could go home tonight and kind of look at their cats through a historian's eyes, what do you think that you would want them to either notice or wonder about? Is there some something you could tell them to kind of approach their cat through new eyes with?

Jodie Stewart:

Like for them to see cats as historical agents. And and I'm gonna quote another scholar here. I've had so many, so much scholarship inform my thinking. Um, and I think this is a particularly interesting quote from Claire Lee, Claire Lee LeBerg, who wrote a fantastic book called Marks for Cat. Um, and I would encourage all your listeners to rush off um and read this book. M-A-R-X. Like Carl Mars. I think Karl Mars, yes. Now she talks about cats being historical agent and having agency. And that, you know, when these big world events happened, you know, these big world-changing events, you know, like world wars, for example, cats were there, and she says, as either rearguard or vanguard. You know, they were both observers and participants in world history. And yes, I think that's a really evocative statement because that again places cats in the center of our thinking about our human past. Um, and that they're not separate from the history of our families, for example. You know, you can go from the micro to the macro. They're not separate from the history of us as a family member, as a community member, as a national citizen. They are intrinsically part of our world. And they act upon us in ways, they influence us in ways that are profoundly important and vital, I think, as well. So, yes, definitely coming away. I'd like them to come away with the understanding that cats are historical agents and that they are active participants in our life worlds as well. Mostly, I think, and I'm thinking now also about what I would like readers of my book to come away with. So those those readers that perhaps aren't fortunate enough to have a cat in their life, I hope they rush off to their local shelter. And there's many, many great shelters doing fabulous work, rehoming, kittens and cats. I hope they rush off and I hope they adopt a cat. Um, and of course they need to do their research and they think need to think carefully about it. I don't want to be a sponsor, you know, a hugely uninformed decision, of course. But I but I hope that they they at least think about it and that they do it because I hope that my book sort of engenders that appreciation for cats and that love of cats, because my life was profoundly changed by my love and relationship with a cat, and I'll never be the same again. And I hope for everyone to have that that similar experience because my love for my cat, my cat has been life-changing, life-altering, and life-affirming.

Kristiina Wilson:

I love to hear that. I think that is a wonderful that's it, that's a wonderful message. And I want to thank you so, so much for chatting with me. This is I feel like I could talk to you for hours and we still wouldn't get through all the questions that I have for you. So we'll probably have to have you back on to have a part two to talk more about the history of cats and all of your work because it's so interesting. How can listeners read some of your work? Do you want to shout out your Substack?

Jodie Stewart:

Yeah, I I think the best way for people to find me very simply is uh Instagram. Okay. Uh at a at a cultural history of cats. Uh uh cat historian on Substack is my Substack, but I've also got all my Substack linked in my Instagram account. I have Facebook also, um, also at a cultural history of cats. If you just Google Jody Stewart Cat Historian, there's not another one. There's not two of you. Another one. Not two of me. Lots of things will come up. Yeah, I I publish monthly on my Substack. My Substack's just generally a rumination on on the on the work of being a cat historian and some of the very kind of sticky questions that I have to um think through. Um and it's been a great way to sort of engage with, you know, to sort of air out some of these ideas around cats and our relationship with them. Yes. So that's where you can find me. You can email me if you like. All that information's also on I love to hear from fellow cat lovers or just the cat curious or even lovers of history.

Kristiina Wilson:

All right. I'm sure you will hear from some people. And and I want to thank you again. This was such a great discussion. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review wherever you listen. It super helps. For more information and to support our podcast, check out our website at hipspintelpodcast.com. You can also find us on Instagram at Hip Tell Podcast. Music provided by Cappy.

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Kristiina Wilson

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