Socks, RIP
by Michael Schaffer

Here’s my send-off to Socks, the Clinton family cat and White House ground-breaker, from Obit magazine. Excerpts:

The idea of a respected public figure nuzzling with a pet cat may seem unobjectionable now, but it would have seemed odd until not long before Clinton’s election. Well into America’s postwar pet boom, cats lagged behind: The first vet school classes on cats were only introduced in the late 1960s; the first professional journal about feline medicine started some years later. Though they’re a less expensive pet, their population didn’t catch up with dogs until late in the 20th century. Even then, the species contended with a number of cultural associations — cats were menacing, they were mysterious, and they were feminine — that weren’t exactly appealing to typical pols. Bill Clinton, with his feminist wife and his willingness to tear up, proved a groundbreaker…

But as with so many other idealistic souls who followed the Arkansan to Washington, Socks did not escape the partisan attacks — or the personal betrayals — that characterized his era. At one point, Dan Burton, the right-wing congressman and scourge of the Clinton administration, turned his investigatory energy on the cat, questioning the use of White House personnel to answer letters mailed to Socks. But even greater pain would come from another direction. In 1997, the president adopted a chocolate lab named Buddy, who quickly lept past the cat in his master’s affections. The traditional pet order had been re-established. Socks had been triangulated.

And while Bill and Hillary managed to repair their relationship after his affair with Monica Lewinsky, Buddy’s arrival signaled a permanent rupture for Socks. One 1998 photograph shows the cat, fur standing up, arching his back in anger as the president ambled over in the company of his beloved dog. Clinton joked that he had an easier time bringing Israelis and Palenstinians together than getting his pets to interact. At any rate, the president made his choice: On leaving office in 2001, Buddy moved to New York with the family. Socks moved to southern Maryland with Betty Currie, Clinton’s old secretary, whose desk outside the Oval Office Socks had once frequented…

Check out the whole thing here.