A new round of cattiness emerged on Wednesday when billionaire Elon Musk, a vocal republican supporter and reportedly an inspiration behind Tony Stark- a Marvel comics superhero- took a non- heroic dig at pop star Taylor Swift and jumped into the cat debate.

Must wrote on X: “Toxoplasma gondii is a danger to our democracy.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says “Toxoplasma gondii is a protozoan parasite that infects most species of warm-blooded animals, including humans, and causes the disease toxoplasmosis… the only known definitive hosts for Toxoplasma gondii are members of family Felidae (domestic cats and their relatives).”

A study in Nature, published on September 5 2022 says “T. gondii infection was associated with mania, schizophrenia, depression, recurrent depressive disorder and bipolar disorder.”

Hours before connecting democracy and an infection, Musk wrote on ‘X’: “Fine Taylor … you win … I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life.”

Elon Musk, who acquired Twitter and renamed it ‘X’, has 197.3 million followers on the platform. Taylor Swift has 95.2 million.

Musk’s comment comes right after Swift supported democrat Kamala Harris’s candidature on Instagram on Wednesday. Swift had signed off the post as “childless cat lady.” It was a not-so-veiled dig at Donald Trump and Ohio senator JD Vance, who believe that immigrants eat cats. Is it Trump’s and Vance’s underlying fear of the Chinese, who are rumoured to eat cats? We don’t know. But we do know that right wing populist theories stereotype Asian immigrants as people who eat dogs, cats, and even jobs.

Swift, an ardent cat lover, often poses with her cat, which is curiously named Benjamin Button.

Now there is no clarity if Musk wants to give away a child to Swift out of the dozen children he fathered or wants to father a child with her.

Musk frequently expresses worry about the insufficient rate of procreation, as reported by The New York Times in July 2022. “Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far.” Musk wrote on July 7, 2022.

But what we know is that people have accused Musk of sexual misconduct in the past. The same report in the New York Times says SpaceX paid $250,000 to a flight attendant after she accused Musk of showing her his penis. Musk denied the allegations, calling them “utterly untrue.”

Is Musk serious about guarding Swift’s cats with his life? Is it about cats or is it about the popularity of women, such as Taylor Swift and Kamala Harris? Whatever it is, cats rule this debate.