Seeking to ban books like “Bathe the Cat” has less to do with morality than it does with a yearning for control
When the Instagram account of free-expression institution PEN America dropped successive posts last week about cat and dog related books that have recently been challenged for inappropriate content in various states and school districts, people on the platform rose up in defense of the animals, lobbing some theories into the either (cats are familiars to witches; cats are independent-minded icons known for not putting up with nonsense) but also expressed surprise that book bans are still a thing, which was exactly the point of PEN’s posts. Book bans came roaring back several years ago, when the inflection points of the COVID lockdown and the murder of George Floyd were forcing uncomfortable and messy conversations.
PEN has monitored the wheres and whys of censorship since 1922; the group defines book bans as “any action taken against a book based on its content that leads to a previously accessible book” being restricted or removed. PEN’s yearly snapshots of book-ban frequency and trends have been startlingly consistent in recent years: Between 2021 and 2023, the group’s Index of School Book Bans clocked 5,894 instances of book bans in 41 states; in the 2023–24 school year, the number was close to double that. But what do cats and dogs have to do with it?
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