The Secret Diary of Taylor Swift’s Cat, aged 10¾.
Other partners have come and gone but I’ve been at the singer’s side for a decade, as her favourite furry friend – and this is our story.
The truth is I’ve never been able to stand her. That faux-sweetness. The permanent victim status. The confected gratitude as she tours the world and goes to bed in a pit of money. People think she’s humble, but she’s never met a mirror she didn’t like. A renowned monogamist? Yeah, and I’m a Bichon Frisé… She has men come and go all through the day, satisfying her every craven desire. She is a monster, a hack, a trashy little fame whore. And it’s about time we all woke up to it.
Who is ‘she’, you ask, the cat’s grandmother? No, my grandmother was a saint. I refer, of course, to Choupette, Karl Lagerfeld’s blue-eyed Birman, often touted as one of the ‘richest cats in the world’. (The most well-PR’d cat in the world, more to the point.)
In rankings of famous cats, I’m forever number two, despite my fortune being a reported $97 million (eclipsing her estimated $13 million). But at least my conscience is clear. Tell me, who was the last person to see Lagerfeld alive? And who ended up left with a meaty portion of his fortune in the will? I’m not accusing anyone of anything. I’m just asking questions, that’s all.
For those unaware, I have been the primary cat companion of the global superstar Taylor Alison Swift for 10 years this summer.
In June 2014, when I was just a kitten, Lady Swift posted a photograph on Instagram of me, gazing back at her from her lap. ‘Meet Olivia Benson,’ she wrote, and, not for the first time, I broke the internet.
OMG what kind of cat is that?! I want one!’ fans would scream. The official answer is that I am a Scottish Fold, a valuable and distinctive breed of domestic cat due to our ‘folded’ ears, caused by a dominant gene mutation associated with osteochondrodysplasia. The unofficial answer is that I’m one of a kind, so back off and good luck, sister.
The name Olivia Benson was given to me in honour of the lead character in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show Lady Swift is a great fan of. Is it funny that everyone calls her Tay Tay, which sounds more like a cat than a grown woman, but my name sounds more like a grown woman than a cat? I don’t think that’s funny.
Whether I’ve since outgrown that character and become the more famous Olivia Benson is not for me to say, but I’ll just point out that anyone who denies it isn’t a serious person. I met the other ‘Olivia’ once. She’s smaller than she looks on TV.
only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.’
Well that’s essentially what happens with Lady Swift. When I need her most, she carries me. And if she tries to put me in a cat carrier, I claw her eyes out. It’s simple.
The music videos I’ve appeared in have been a real highlight, especially for my fans. I did Blank Space, Me! and Karma, as well as appearing in the documentary Miss Americana. Whenever Lady Swift needs a little boost, whenever her popularity is waning and Beyoncé has the upper hand, she tends to reach for a touch of the Livvy-B magic, as I call it but nobody else does, and only a little sprinkle does the job. I do not play live with her on tour; they cannot afford my rider or grooming budget.
But there have been low points, too. People are not always kind. They dismiss my entire existence as being pointless, saying I’m rich and famous for no reason other than who I’m related to, and that I should get a life. To which I say: you’re one to talk, you’re halfway through a ghost-written article imagining the life of a celebrity cat.
It’s true I have not liked all the boyfriends, or even bothered to learn all their names – though I do like that I am worth twice as much as Lady Swift’s latest plaything, Travis Kelce.
I also didn’t enjoy it when Ed Sheeran bought his own Scottish Fold, an absolute letch called Calippo, and a surge in popularity led to the British Veterinary Association calling for a ban on breeding Scottish Folds. I asked Lady Swift to pay for the BVA’s headquarters to be firebombed in response. She claimed not to understand me. I told her I am Scottish, not Martian.
Then there was the movie Cats. Oh lord, Cats. She told me about it and I thought it was a joke. I said, ‘With the greatest respect, my lady, are you outside of your mind? They’re having to CGI Jason Derulo’s penis out of a scene involving Dame Judi Dench and James Corden. How can you think this is a good thing?’
But again she didn’t listen. I actually knew the cat Mr Mistoffelees was based on. It wasn’t ‘magical powers’ that made him dance constantly, I can tell you…
Generally, though, I look back on the past decade with Lady Swift and think, ‘Only 10 years? It feels more like half a century.’ Then people remind me that 10 human years equate to 56 cat years and I relax a little, especially because that means Choupette is nearly 70 and thus approaching death.
Lady Swift has had many Eras since we first met. She has reinvented herself and grown as a person, as a star, but through it all she has remained a Cat Lady. And for that I’m grateful. Now, I will close on a poem about cats, written by Emily Dickinson, who it turns out is a distant yet predictable relation of Lady Swift herself.
She sights a Bird – she chuckles – /She flattens – then she crawls
