Breaking Down Every Cat Reference in Taylor Swifts Music

May 2024 · 5 minute read

Taylor Swift is also one of the most best-selling music artists of all time, however she may be a self-proclaimed “cat girl” who is not afraid to specific her love for tom cats via her lyrics.

Swift — who's a “cat mother” to Scottish folds Meredith Grey and Olivia Benson and Ragdoll Benjamin Button (named after characters from Grey’s Anatomy, Law & Order: SVU and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, respectively) — is prone to the usage of kitties as metaphors in her music.

“Karma is a cat purring in my lap ‘cause it loves me,” Swift sings in her Midnights track “Karma.” (Mariska Hargitay, who plays Olivia Benson’s namesake on SVU, named her cat Karma in 2023 after Swift’s tune.)

Moreover, Swift’s three cats have made appearances along her in music movies, mag covers and social media posts during her occupation. The singer’s love of cats even impressed her to appear in Tom Hooper’s 2019 film adaptation of the Broadway musical Cats.

“I've cats. I’m obsessed with them. I really like my cats so much that once a role got here up in a movie known as Cats, I simply concept, like, I gotta do this,” she instructed TIME in 2019. “[Cats are] very dignified. They’re unbiased. They’re very able to dealing with their own life.”

That similar yr, Swift’s cats Meredith and Olivia costarred in her music video for ME! along Brendon Urie. Referring to the Scottish folds as her “younger daughters” in the video, Swift will get into an issue with Urie’s persona, and he ultimately items Swift with a kitten to invite her for her forgiveness. That kitten was once a young Benjamin, and Swift couldn’t assist but take him house once they wrapped the video.

Benjamin went on to grace the quilt of TIME alongside Swift in 2023 when she was once named Person of the Year. “We’d like to call you Person of the Yea- […] Me: Can I carry my cat,” Swift wrote via X on the time, taking a dig at her obsession while sharing the duvet.

Keep scrolling for a comprehensive guide to every time Swift has referenced cats in her lyrics:

“Wonderland”

In the Alice in Wonderland-themed track from 1989 (Taylor’s Version), Swift references some of the well-known fictional cats of all time.

“Didn’t you calm my fears with a Cheshire Cat smile?” she sings.

Earlier in the music, she sings: “Didn’t you flash your inexperienced eyes at me? / Haven’t you heard what turns into of curious minds?” While Swift is obviously talking to an ex in the music, she may be referencing the fairway eyes of the Cheshire Cat and the proverb “Curiosity killed the cat.”

“Gorgeous”

Swift sings of a lover whose attractiveness makes her “furious” in the Reputation track from 2017. During the music’s bridge, the pop big name sings, “You make me so happy it turns again to unhappy / There’s nothing I hate greater than what I will be able to’t have / Guess I’ll simply come across house to my cats alone / Unless you wanna come alongside.”

The lyric likely references a viral red carpet interview from the 2015 Grammys, all through which Swift was advised via an interviewer, “You’re going to walk home with more than perhaps only a trophy tonight, I feel numerous males.” In reaction, Swift quipped, “I’m no longer going to stroll home with any men tonight. I’m going to move hang around with my buddies, and then I go home to the cats.”

“Paper Rings”

Using the idiom “cat and mouse,” which refers to a back-and-forth pursuit, Swift sings about her favorite animal once again at the Lover monitor “Paper Rings.”

The song describes the evolution of a relationship from a couple’s first assembly to a marriage proposal with “paper rings.” Of the twosome’s preliminary relationship, Swift sings, “Cat and mouse for a month or two or 3 / Now I wake up in the night time and watch you breathe.”

“Vigilante Sh*t”

Swift starts one in all her extra risqué songs, “Vigilante Sh*t” off of 2022’s Midnights, with the lyric, “Draw the cat eye, sharp enough to kill a person.”

The pop famous person is referencing the eyeliner technique that mimics the slant of a cat eye in the song, which takes intention at an enemy from her previous. (Many lovers have theorized that this song is about her feud with Scooter Braun.)

“They say looks can kill and I would possibly try,” Swift sings later in the chorus. “I don’t dress for girls / I don’t get dressed for males / Lately, I’ve been dressing for revenge.”

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“Karma”

In the dance-pop tune off Midnights, Swift uses a slew of metaphors to convey karma working in her want.

“Karma is my boyfriend / Karma is a god / Karma is the breeze in my hair at the weekend / Karma’s a relaxing concept / Aren’t you green with envy that for you it’s not?” Swift sings in the tune’s chorus.

She continues: “Sweet like honey, karma is a cat / purring in my lap ‘cause it loves me.”

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