Yes, it’s time for another episode of Little Nemo overanalyzes song lyrics.
“Stray Cat Strut” is a 1981 hit by the band Stray Cats is sung in the first person. It has the following lyrics:
I strut right by with my tail in the air I’m a feline Casanova Get a shoe thrown at me from a mean old man Get my dinner from a garbage can
These lines suggest that the singer is literally a stray cat. But the song also has these lines:
Ain’t got enough dough to pay the rent I’m flat broke but I don’t care
Having money is not a concern held by an actual cat. So these lines suggest the singer is only figuratively a stray cat.
Which is it? Is the singer supposed to be an actual cat who’s worried about his rent payments? Or is the singer supposed to be a human who’s a metaphorical cat but lives the role so well that he eats garbage and people throw shoes at him?
The singer wishes he could be as carefree and wild as a stray cat, but he has cat class and style. Sounds like being a cat is aspirational, since he’s homeless for non-payment of rent.
Or, maybe he’s a furry. Someone should check the recording studio for litter boxes.
I think he’s a human living the stray cat life. On his own, slinking down the alley looking for a fight. He’s a wanderer, yeah a wanderer, he roams around around around around.
Sorry.
The shoe and garbage can dinners are metaphors for haters who don’t appreciate his lifestyle, and his relative poverty making meal planning a challenge. But he’s cool with it, he’s carefree and wild.
The singer is not a felis catus. The singer is not singing about an actual kitty who is. The singer is riffing on the characteristics and traits of an alley cat in such a way as to say “me and the alley cat, we’re kindred spirits, I’m just like that cat is in lots of ways”.
Maybe he’s the teenage girl Mick is yowling about in the Stones’ “Stray Cat Blues,” reminiscing about those wild, freedom-filled, back-scratching days when he also used to be female. (Or maybe Mick was singing about a guy!)
This is a anthropocentric perspective. Perhaps the singer is a genuine cat and things like eating out of garbage cans and having shows thrown at him are actual events that he has endured. But in an effort to convey his suffering in a way that a human audience can relate to, he uses human metaphors like not being able to pay the rent.
I saw them play at the Paradise in Boston some time in the 80s (can’t tell exactly when, cause when you google ‘Stray Cats Boston’ you get a lot of animal shelters.)
Anyway, they tore it up. Great show. Which has nothing to do with this thread, but I thought I’d brag a little.
