Here’s some rare celebrity gossip on this site, posted because it involves a celebrity-scratching cat.
Taylor Swift is reportedly getting her legs insured for forty million dollars. Although I didn’t believe that because it was reported by The National Enquirer, the Instagram photo and caption below, showing a scratch made by her cat Meredith, either substantiates that rumor or mocks it. Regardless, it shows that cats respect neither fame nor money:
That’s a nasty scratch! Is she going to now write a song about being clawed by a cat she was only trying to love?
Swift has two cats. The malefactor who scratched her is Meredith Gray, a Scottish Fold named after the character played by Ellen Pompeo on the t.v. show “Grey’s Anatomy”. Here’s Meredith as a kitten:
Her other cat is Olivia Benson, named after Mariska Hargitay’s detective character on the t.v. show “Law and Order SVU”. Here’s Swift with Olivia, clearly another lop-eared cat:
I don’t much like her music, but I like her cats!
$40 million? $40 million! You’ve got to be kidding me.
Oh, wait, I thought you meant $40 million _each_. Carry on.
My legs are worth more than that but only to me!
I am sure that they are worth that to each other as well! 🙂
Its a really sad commentary on our society, to be frank. You’ve got here a young accomplished singer who writes music people love, and her (and Lloyd’s) expectation is that if she suddenly becomes one-legged or no-legged, nobody will like her music any more or want to go to her concerts, and she’ll lose income. The insurance clause doesn’t say anything about Taylor Swift’s vanity so much as it says something really bad about our (collectively as a society) vanity.
Is it possible that her cats are not enamored of her music either.
Ha! You beat me to it!!!
Wow I’ve owned a whole bunch of cats and played rough with many more, and I’ve never gotten a scratch that bad. Methinks Taylor does not spend much time around “her” kittehs or even kittehs in general. Or its a ‘fake’ in that that isn’t a kitteh scratch in the first place.
“I don’t much like her music, but I like her cats!”
:-0
(BTW, I don’t think her legs are worth 40 million – too twig-shaped. Maybe more like 15 million…)
As the father of a daughter with an eating disorder, I wouldn’t at all be surprised if Taylor Swift was anorexic. And I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. She looks way too thin to me: and she is talented, she can turn a phrase. x
Sorry to hear that, Dermot. My sincerest hopes for her recovery!
Thank you for the kind words, Diane and Dominic. It’s at times like this that I thank goodness that Britain has a National Health Service, free at the point of delivery. If it did not my daughter could quite possibly be dead. The staff are exemplary, kind, open and thoroughly skilled.
When I look at Taylor Swift, I see a woman just 4 days away from being in an Eating Disorder Unit. If her brain told her to stop eating, it looks to my unprofessional eye as if her body would start to shut down. I hope the people around her don’t view her body-shape as a cash-cow.
Although my (adopted) daughter’s psychology is complicated by her traumatic first year, adolescent girls really are influenced by famous persons’ appearance. What danger is the role-model herself in? x
It is not good – a friend’s daughter is in a similar situation…
On Friday night I got a very nasty “scratch” on my face from a cat I’ve been cat-sitting since December 15. It was an accident and not an attack. Dexter was on my chest, and instead of jumping off me and on to the floor, he inexplicably scampered up and across my face. I ended up with a deep puncture wound that spilled about a tablespoon of blood (seems like a lot to me). I was going to forget about it after putting a Band-Aid on it, but my sister and my mother both insisted I should get a tetanus shot (long overdue). So I did.
As for Taylor Swift, yeah, her scratch is a bit on the nasty side of things, but judging from her photo, my cut (not a scratch) is far worse. But I will not be insuring my face for $40 million dollars.
As for Dexter, he remains a great cat. I’m going to miss him when he leaves April 1.
Ok, here goes. Deep breath. I know that her music is pure pop and totally, like, shallow and commercial ‘n stuff? But damn, that girl can bust out a catchy tune. There, I said it and I am not ashamed.
I agree. I’ve heard a few songs from her that I’ve liked. She isn’t a songwriting genius, but she is super-talented.
Shake it off is ridiculously catchy. I’d put even money that the 40 million is made up and she is taking the piss out of it
Try dating a woman who thinks Taylor Swift belongs on the same honored shelf as Loretta Lynn, Joni Mitchell and Aretha Franklin and whom thinks playing the songs “Fifteen” and “Dear John” ad nauseum is the best way to turn you into a super-fan and see if that doesn’t change your opinion.
CLUTCH RULZ!
Your choices are excellent examples of greatness and staying power. Lets see how T.S. holds up over 30 or so years.
As for the dating situation, maybe a compromise like Tina Turner, Pat Banatar, Joan Jett, etc.
“I know that her music is pure pop and totally, like, shallow and commercial ‘n stuff?”
Ha. Is it shallow and commercial as compared to, say, Kanye West? At least with here there is a identifiable melody line that can be printed on sheet music.
No doubt like Liberace, she cries all the way to the bank.
Anyway, I doubt that the cat will grab her mic and embarrass her in public. Or (as the honorable Mr. West did in Sydney last September) insist that everyone stand up before it will continue with its performance, including a woman with a(n unscratchable) prosthetic leg, who like everyone else PAID to attend and who, in response to the caterwauling, ululating crowd egged on by West, finally took it off and waved it around in support of her argument that she ought not be required to stand to satisfy Narcissus Unbound.
“here” – “her”
“There, I said it and I am not ashamed.”
Nor should you be. Plenty of respected musicians rate her, including Neil Young and Elvis Costello. With fans like that, who cares about the detractors?
Never knowingly heard it!
I’m not so sure that scratch is from a cat. There’s a second smaller scratch perfectly parallel to it an inch or two farther up her thigh. And it’s awfully long…and starts at the outside and continues to up and to the inside.
I’m just not envisioning any geometry with a cat that size that would leave a scratch like that.
b&
Maybe the cat will bring that up during the trial.
Well, the not cat be bot a glove, so you must acquit!
b&
I noticed it too, and it’s not quite perfectly parallel imo, and it could be the other paw getting in on the act! Reasonable doubt or more proof – high drama!
Yeah…but cats don’t strike simultaneously with both paws. The closest they come to that sort of thing is to grab with both front paws and simultaneously bite and kick with the rear paws — and that’s not what we see here.
Plus, it’s an awfully long scratch for a cat. The only time you get scratches anywhere near that long is when the cat strikes and you withdraw before the claw disengages…but that brings us back to the geometry problems, of the cut starting low and outside and ending high and inside.
About the only thing I can think of would be the cat facing away from Taylor, getting a claw from each paw in Taylor’s outer thigh and Taylor pulling the cat up and to her chest before the cat retracted. And that doesn’t make sense…it’s not how an human would react in such a situation — and for the cat to be in the type of panic mode that would support that sort of thing, Taylor’s face and hands would be a worse mess than her thigh.
I’ll bet dollars to donuts that the cat had nothing to do with the scratch, and Taylor instead klutzily scratched herself on some fixed object.
b&
It looks from the picture as though the leg is being twisted slightly to the right and the camera is being held quite low and out to her left, obviously to get the best view of the injury.
If her leg were straight out with the knee facing up rather than to the right, and the shot taken from directly above, I think it would show that the scratch begins close to the centre of the leg, running across to the left and down the outer thigh.
I don’t think it implausible that a cat, finding itself sliding arse-first off a leg, would attempt to preserve dignity (because cats are far too vain to allow themselves to look anything other than superior) as well as to punish the owner of the leg whether dignity is maintained or not (because cats are also sociopathic and sadistic by nature) by employing the claws, resulting in an injury just like the one in the picture.
That’s actually a rather interesting idea. Could be.
b&
Maybe it was a non-Euclidean cat.
Come to think of it…cats are notoriously hostile to Euclid.
b&
May I just say, as a parent of a child in the prime Taylor Swift demographic, that there is WAY worse pop music than hers out there *cough* *boybands* *cough* (the coughing is covering up the retching sounds.
I enjoy quite a few of her songs, though the latest album is less to my taste.
My eleven year old loves you and Taylor Swift. And cats
And science and math and reading, and much more.
Forty million simoleons? Makes one wonder what Betty Grable’s gams would be worth on today’s inflated market.
Gams? In 2015?
It was ’43, and WWII was raging, when Ms. Grable posed for the linked photo. That’s how Willie and Joe, and Kilroy, and the other dogface G.I.s talked in those days. (Me? I’m not from that generation, so would never myself use a term like that or objectify women’s body parts.)
Not a criticism, just surprise at seeing it for the first time in several decades! ☺
According to the internet they’d be worth $13,894,201.18, but I’m not sure if that’s each or per pair.
A bargain at twice the price — depending, of course, on whether we’re talking one leg or two.
My guess is that a single Lloyds of London policy would have covered both Ms. Grable’s legs and that the loss of either would have required a full payout, given the limitations it would have placed on her Hollywood cheesecake posing career — although someone like Ginger Rodgers could have probably fought through such a loss, given that she already did everything Fred Astaire could do, but backwards and in high heels.
Oh yes — but Eleanor Powell could do everything Ginger Rogers could do, blindfolded, backwards and in high heels! Check: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94XNnIXe2zE
Hey, that was good. And her legs, wow — they go all the way…down to the floor.
I couldn’t help admiring the nice scratch.
Some news have legs…
Hope this doesn’t mean Taylor’s gonna catch a fever and start singing like Ted Nugent….
First off, it is clearly a joke. She’s mocking all the media coverage of her insurance policy (assuming it’s real).
On the other hand, she doesn’t seem to understand how insurance works. The leg is clearly injured, so if she has an insurance policy on it, surely it should be paying out. Unless there is an anti cat cause in it – I know Acts of D*g are often excluded…
Apparently Meredith Gray felt that $40M was too low a figure.