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Mixed into the realistic plot of “Cat Person” are recurring elements from the genres of gothic and horror. While “Cat Person” is not a horror story, Margot fears that Robert might rape, murder, or kidnap her. The idea first comes into Margot’s mind when Robert picks her up for the date and seems too quiet. She feels wildly uncomfortable, and when Robert assures her that he won’t murder her, the fact that he recognizes her anxiety and jokes about it doesn’t make his “Don’t worry” remark less creepy.
Robert’s house is in a “pretty, wooded neighborhood,” an apparently benign description that even so evokes gothic tales set in remote forests. As they enter, Robert reminds Margot “darkly” about the cats. Before Margot’s eyes can fully adjust to the dimly lit front room, Robert shoves her into the nearly bare bedroom where, during sex, she feels that she is in “pinned stasis”—a prisoner for a few moments, unable to escape. The phrase evokes rooms she imagines with kidnap victims or chains. And in a gothic Exorcist-style moment, Margot describes Robert’s fondling of her breasts and crotch as the motion of “some perverse sign of the cross.”
After sex, Margot gives off a “black, hateful aura.” The rainy drive back to the dorm seems endless as Robert listens to NPR—an incongruous detail given that Margot is thinking, “Maybe he’ll murder me now.” Even the stalking that ends the story has a gothic touch: Robert waits alone at a back table, “hunched” in his seat. The recurring horror motif adds a hint of menace to a story about a bad first date that otherwise might have been described in more comic terms; this suggests that the dating world, particularly for women, carries with it the potential for danger.
