I think it's a trope that goes back hundreds of years to the times when wise women and midwives had standing in the community without necessarily buying into the patriarchal power structure. These women often kept cats, in order to manage rats , and because cats, like these sorts of women, aren't "obedient dogs" to the power structure, they are a threat. For a time, they were burned or hung as witches and cats were killed on site - probably a major contributing reason for the bubonic plague - because there weren't enough cats to kill the rats that carried the fleas that caused the plague.