What Is So Threatening About Pied Pipers and Cat Ladies?

As outcasts in legend and figurative language, the cat-loving witch and striped musician frequently present a countercultural, queer threat to the biogenetic basis/bias of the bourgeois domicile. Just as in the Middle Ages, the cat lady is connected to anxieties over reproductive control. The figure of the Pied Piper springs from generational demographic shifts and certainly elicits parental fears of losing possession of, emotional sway over, and proximity to offspring. Used in contemporary rhetoric to represent outsiders to the biofamily, both figures are gender non-conforming and childfree. As such, they resist reproductive norms. When they offer care, it is in the form of found family. Far from being a threat to children, alloparents, steps, adopters, and committed caregivers can create a safety network of “other significant others” many need.