Cat & Nat Want Moms To Take Time To Find Joy In & Outside Of Motherhood

Catherine Belknap and Natalie Telfer, AKA the Canadian comedy duo Cat & Nat have seven children between them — three and four respectively — and when I speak to them by Zoom, all of them are still home for summer break... which is why they’re taking our interview in the front seat of a car. It’s the same spot where they film a lot of their content for millions of followers on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, and it gives our conversation a kind of “chatting in the parent pick-up line” feel.

“This is our private studio,” Telfer (hereafter “Nat”) tells me. “It literally is the office.”

The pair were friends, “but not best friends,” back in high school. It wasn’t until they were both mothers of young children searching for a sympathetic ear that they reconnected on Facebook and their rapport began. Soon it grew into the kind of friendship where, sometimes, I forget I’m talking to two people. They don’t finish each other’s sentences — their sentences flow in and out of one another. It’s not hard to understand why they’ve built such a remarkable following among moms who crave similar camaraderie, particularly in the often socially isolating world of motherhood.

I spoke to the duo about the community they’ve built online, orthodontia (no parent of teens escapes at least thinking about this one), and the chaos of trying to do anything before kids go back to school.

You two have raised your children together. Watching the few videos that feature your children, I wasn’t always sure whose were whose: it’s like this sweet little commune of kids.

Nat: On purpose. Wouldn’t that be great? A commune? Those people have it right.

It was your kids that reconnected you: you had little ones around the same time.

Nat: When I had a baby, I was just feeling very alone, and I didn't know anyone else who had a baby. I would go to the mom groups, but I was just like, I don't know if I have anything in common. I just feel overwhelmed. I can barely leave the house. And then I saw that Cat had a baby, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, you have one too? You have to come over!”

Cat: With a puppy! “You have one too?”

Nat: How about we have to train these puppies together? And she came over, thank God, because it's like, someone from the past, it feels just comfortable to feel less judged, and there's already a history there.

Cat: You don't have to think about a friendship.

Nat: Right, you don't have to get to know her. I already knew everything.

Cat: It was really nice to have an adult with you that didn't judge you, and then you also got to take care of your baby, and they were doing the exact same thing.

Nat: You have so many thoughts in your head as a mom, and you feel like you have, well, when you're sitting there with the baby, you have no one to talk to about it. But when you have someone right there, you can just beat the *vocalizes a kind of “oomph”* out of every topic.

And especially in those early days motherhood takes up all your time...

Nat: And it's exhausting, and it's stressful, and you're literally like... Before I started hanging out with her every day I was counting down the minutes until my husband would come home so I didn't have to be alone.

Cat: And even that isn’t the same. They're not the same, because you're trading off chores or being like ‘You don't know what it's like.’ He's like, ‘You don't know what it's like to go to work.’ So it's nice to have someone who doesn't want anything from you but just to be with you.

And you have obviously built this sense of camaraderie into an amazing online community and career, and one of those things is you have partnered with Invisalign. Before you partnered with the company, had you or any of your many children required orthodontia?

Cat: I actually got Invisalign as an adult. I started a year ago; I'm done now. And I started talking about my journey online.

Nat: And then my son joined. He was getting Invisalign as well.

Cat: So we had made a connection with them, and they had let us know that there was this new technology coming out, and did we have kids around the age of when they're doing orthodontics for expanding their mouths? I was like, I actually know exactly what that is because my oldest had the metal one...

Nat: ... with the key...

Cat: ... that went in their mouth, and you have to turn it! She's an easier-going personality than the third or the seventh of our children, which is my baby who needed the palatal expander. She had sworn to me she would never get one because she’d seen her sister’s experience. I don't know if you have a youngest child like this, but they can be quite frightening. They mean what they say and bribery doesn't work with them.

So when Invisalign showed me that they had the actual expander that they can do themselves, that goes in and out of their mouth and you switch daily, so there's no clunky thing in their mouth, I was so excited and it worked flawlessly. Every child's different, but for her it was so easy and painless and fast so it didn’t have to be a power struggle.

Speaking of struggles, everyone has an opinion on this, but I feel like you're in a good position to really have an opinion on this because your kids are now teens. What is the hardest age, in your opinion?

Cat: I believe that there is no challenging age. It's what's challenging for you. I think everyone's got such a hard season, and I don't don't think there's one specific season.

Nat: Our kids are still so not out of the woods. ... The thing that's kind of scary about teenagers is that they don't have that much time left with you in your house, and the mistakes they make can be a lot bigger and can affect their lives more than just if they break their arm when they're young.

Cat: You really see how you parented them when they hit the teenage years. Like, did we get it all in? Are the boundaries there? Do you know your manners? Can you hold a job?

Nat: It's also scary because teenagers are supposed to be making mistakes and experimenting and trying things. And most of the time it’s not the end of the world, but it feels like, “Oh my gosh, is this it for them?” But it's also really nice to get to know them as people and to hang out with them and have experience with them when... Now I feel often when I'm talking to my teenager that she has insight on things, better insights on things than I have.

You started this when your kids were much younger, and I feel like from a content and getting materials perspective, that can be challenging, but it can also be really interesting because the things you’re experiencing and talking about are always evolving. Your content, by nature of what it is, can’t stay stagnant. How have you experienced that trajectory?

Cat: As content creators, we do what is naturally organic for us rather than what the trend is, because the motherhood space is well taken care of. We are reminding moms to have fun and find joy and laugh— finding moments for yourself and stealing times of joy. As they get older, that’s different! We used to be able to plan our schedules around our kids, and that meant where we wanted to go, what we wanted to do, and who we wanted to hang out with. And now it's where they want to go, who they want to hang with, and what they want to do. So I think as your kids grow older, you have to almost find yourself even harder and lean into that because you can get run over by their lives very quickly. And I think that it's our job to steal time back in a way.

Nat: From a content perspective — what we're going through as moms and women with the kids that are getting older — there is more than enough content to create. We have so much to talk about. We're just setting up our brand new podcast after taking the summer off and there is so much to be said.

I am very excited to listen. And when does that launch?

Nat: We can start recording when they're in school. *sighs* As a mom, you're just like...I was asking another mom recently, “Well, what time does school start next week?” And she goes, “That's a next week problem.” That’s what it’s like with the podcast. But it's a brand new set, and it's brand new content, and it's going to be... I mean, we need it. It's our therapy.

Cat: Right now, we're just filling out forms, and I think actually filling out paper forms were easier than the digital. “Oh, let's email this. Oh, another email. Oh, another email. Oh, wait...” There has been like 40 emails in the past week. Like, I'm not going to school! Can't you tell them when they get there? I have no control over this! Isn't this their responsibility?

And you are going on tour in October...

Nat: What a little reminder of things we have to do...

It's a next month problem. You'll deal with it next month.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.