CHICAGO – Fed up with being catcalled while doing things as mundane as running errands, exercising or simply sitting on a park bench, local woman Cassandra Dalton, 26, has begun responding by hissing viciously at the man responsible, baring her teeth and affecting a crazed look in her eye while imitating her cat Delilah. “It’s been extremely effective,” Dalton reports. “Now when I do it, the guy shuts up, looks scared, and keeps walking. I’ve been recommending it to my girlfriends as a useful technique.”
Dalton’s targets were not as enthused with the new strategy. They claim it’s a highly unsettling and an unnecessarily cruel way of keeping “compliments” and “colorful greetings” at bay.
“It made me super uncomfortable,” said Raymond Flink, 30, an investment banker. “Who would do that in public? It’s so weird and off-putting. If she just smiled instead, I’d be far more willing to talk to her.”
“You shouldn’t hiss at people without warning – you never know if they’ve had bad experiences with cats before,” claimed Eric Smithton, 28, a DJ/barista. “You could be dredging up negative emotions, or even trauma that makes it hard to function. My grandma had a super mean cat that scratched my face. When she hissed at me, it brought me right back to that moment in time, with a snarling tabby named Mr. Jingleberries hissing in my face before clawing it. Is this what I get for expressing myself? Am I supposed to just ignore an ass like that when it walks past me?”
At press time, Dalton was seen maniacally waving her arms as well to further distract and disorient the more persistent callers in her path.
