Mark Ulriksen’s “Childless Cat Lady Inexplicably Enjoying Life”

For the cover of the September 16, 2024, Fall Books special issue, Mark Ulriksen painted a woman, alone, surrounded by cats and happily engrossed in reading—an example of the “childless cat ladies” decried by J. D. Vance, the Vice-Presidential Republican candidate, in an interview from 2021. Vance’s remarks—in which he claims that these women are “miserable at their own lives” and seems to draw moral distinctions between parents and those who choose not to have children—have been resurfacing recently; his attempts to defend himself have mostly backfired. “I know so many single women who favor felines, including our eldest daughter,” Ulriksen said. “And yet they all persist in being happy. Go figure.”