Cats, Our Mysterious "Others"

Our resident alien, Charlie, who has diligently overseen the creation
of this post. (2026, DS.)

"When a man loves cats, I am his friend, and comrade, without further introduction."

- The words of Mark Twain (1835-1910), American author, humorist, and champion of cats. He was known to rent cats when he was away from home (missing his own, vast feline collection.) His favorite cat was a black cat (with a white ruff) named Bambino. Twain is also credited for stating: “If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat." Both quotes and the photo of Twain insert right were sourced from the Smithsonian article: Mark Twain Liked Cats Better Than People.

"Mark Twain" was, incidentally, the name of of the building in Kansas City in which Mac Tonnies (and his cats) resided. (See blog sidebar.) Mark Twain is also one of the memetic connectives between this post and a new  cross-post on my other blog which will appear shortly regarding Kurt Vonnegut. Had Vonnegut, another of Mac's favorite authors, been a cat person, he would have appeared here as well.

Sunday, January 26, 2003

"Why 'Posthuman Blues'? Jack Kerouac's Book of Blues contains some essentially worthless poetry...but if he'd toted a palmtop instead of a ruled notepad, his output would likely find a small but fervent niche audience. His Book of Blues is rich blogging material, written as one would scribble postcards to one's own clone or multidimensional counterpart."

- Mac Tonnies completing his very first post on his new blog, Posthuman Blues. I wasn't aware that the "Blues" half of his title was inspired by Jack Kerouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) and wasn't aware of Book of Blues although I did know of his reverence for On the Road.

Inset left is a vintage photo of Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (his parents were French Canadian) and his cat. This photo, in essence, inspired this post. I suddenly had the hunch that there were more unexpected cat people to be found... and I was right!

(Source: Ranker. Note: slow-loading page but well worth the effort. Numerous celebrities with their cats... from Herman Hesse to Sartre to Bette Davis to Stanley Kubrick!)

Sunday, August 17, 2003

"I was on my computer waiting for a pizza to arrive when I noticed that Spook, my oldest cat, was unusually interested in the window above my air conditioner. I followed her gaze.

The bat from the previous night was hanging from the blinds! Inexplicably inside my apartment!

It immediately started flying all over the place, coming perilously close to the ceiling fan. I ran to the phone and called my apartment's emergency maintenance number and was told that a loose bat in my apartment didn't constitute an emergency. I told them it fucking well did and that they better send someone to help me trap it. (None of this was the bat's fault. I actually like bats; I just don't like sharing my living room with them.)

By this time both my cats were chasing the bat with gleeful abandon. The phone rang: the pizza guy calling from the lobby nine floors down. I grabbed my checkbook and met him at the door just as a maintenance guy and my building's new manager began conferring about the Loose Bat Situation.

The bat, probably exhausted and starving, flew into the kitchen as we walked into my apartment, and the maintenance guy was able to trap it in a towel. It made angry buzzing noises through tiny fangs as he escorted it into the hall. Fortunately, he had every intention of setting the bat free outside.

Now my cats are listless and forlorn. At first, Spook diligently kept looking for it and meowing plaintively. I think the realization that the bat is gone is finally hitting home. But it was certainly fun while it lasted."

- Mac Tonnies via this humorous Posthuman  Blues post. Mac had been blogging for 8 months before mention of his feline companions entered his Posthuman narrative. I guess he was looking for some comic relief... and he found it.

Inset right above is great photograph of one of Mac's fave songwriters, Morrissey, having a magic moment with his tabby found here.

Inset right is one of the most remarkable cat paintings I could find: Suzanne Valadon's glorious Raminou (1920). Valadon was a pretty remarkable artist whose remarkable story can be read in full on this (remarkable) blog. For more Valadon cats see Katzenworld. For a Trans-D article featuring Valadon, see here.

(Continued below the break...)

Sunday, October 19, 2003

"Yesterday I woke up to find that my replica Mars Pathfinder lander was missing from its customary spot beneath my lava lamp. I found it behind my fridge where my smallest cat, Ebe, had deposited it -- miraculously without breaking off the solar panels in the process. Along with the miniature Pathfinder, I discovered a veritable graveyard of abandoned fake mice. I hadn't realized that cats stockpiled things. In any case, they're not nearly as habitual about it as ferrets.

Outside my window a strange annual spectacle known as the Duck Derby is in progress. This involves dumping industrial quantities of floating toy ducks in the artificial creek that winds past my street and betting on the outcome. The winner gets a Volkswagen or something. We Kansas Citians really know how to live it up."

- More fun with felines from PB. Gotta love the rubber duckies! But, personally, I'd watch the Duck Derby all day if I could win a Volkswagen! Meanwhile, inset left, musician Frank Zappa  (December 21, 1940 - December 4, 1993) and his power animal peer at us... dismissing the boy and his dog stereotype and presenting a more modern memetic icon: the thinking man and his cat. Artists and writers who own cats tend to be innovative and subversive. Sometimes even prescient. BTW, Frank was the kind of guy who would've composed an ode to the rubber duckies.

Sunday, April 11, 2004

"A few minutes ago I noticed that my cats were staring oddly at nothing in particular, or perhaps at each other in preparation for one of their frequent good-natured duels. As I waited for one of them to make the first move (my money was on Spook, the oldest), I noticed that they had become enraptured by a longish, many-legged something that had somehow managed to penetrate my ninth-floor apartment.

Suddenly this insectile phantasm started skittering my way; I mustered the courage to stomp it before it could disappear beneath any furniture. I examined the thing's flaccid corpse (antennae still flexing listlessly) before I disposed of it. It was roughly an inch long, with about six legs on either side of its disturbingly meaty body.

The perverse thing is that my cats spent several minutes in a state of denial. They missed the horrid thing. They staked out the area where it had made its last stand and scraped pitifully at the carpet in a futile attempt at feline necromancy."

- Feline necromancy? Gotta love it. Only Mac would come up with something like that. Meanwhile, John Lennon, Yoke Ono (and friend) appear almost gothic in the photo inset right. It is a detail of a photograph taken by Ethan Russell in 1968. Note that many creative cat-lovers seem to be drawn to black cats. Other faves seem to include the Siamese and, of course, one of the wildest cats of all, the venerable tabby.

Incidentally, John Lennon was also a cat artist.

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

"Since I started Posthuman Blues three years ago, I've maintained a pretty strict "no-pet" editorial guideline. I've mentioned my cats a few times, but I've purposefully refrained from posting pictures of them or otherwise doting.

Anyway, now, for whatever reason, I'm breaking my own rule. The following are pictures of my cats, Spook and Ebe. Bear with me; it won't happen again.

I acquired Spook in October, hence the name. "Ebe" is MJ-12 for "Extraterrestrial Biological Entity," which amuses my vet. I like to think 
we have a nice "family" thing going. It's amazing how nuanced cat behavior is -- I'd never really been around them before. My only previous mammalian pet (excluding various mice) was a ferret, Burroughs, who died from a mysterious stomach ailment several years ago. Burroughs was fun; he liked for me to slide him, hockey puck-style, across the kitchen floor, then return over and over again for more."

- Mac Tonnies formally introducing his black cat, Spooky, and his tabby, Ebe, to the world at large in this Posthuman Blues post. Inset left is Spooky, and inset right is Ebe, looking very much like the little Martian cat she was. In spite of their sad fates after Mac died, they were immortalized by artist and writer Mike Clelland in, possibly, the only image in existence featuring Mac and his cats, a wonderful illustration from the Cryptoterrestrials featured at the end of the post. 

Friday, September 29, 2006

To my cats, the red dot possesses its own vitality. It exists as a distinct entity. While they may see me holding the pointer, they can't (or won't) be distracted by such things once the button is pressed and the living room is suddenly alive with luminous vermin. So they chase it. And chase it. And, if they get close enough, even take swipes at it -- in which case I make the dot "flee" or disappear in what seems like a concession of defeat (which, of course, only further arouses the cats' predatory curiosity).

I can't help but be reminded of our continuing search for assumed extraterrestrial vehicles. UFO sightings demonstrate many of the same aspects of a typical feline laser hunt: mysterious disappearances, "impossible" maneuvers and a predilection for trickery -- the apparent desire to be seen despite (or because of) a technology presumed to be far in advance of our own. More than one UFO researcher has noted that UFOs behave more like projections or holograms than nuts-and-bolts craft . . . an observation that begs the nature of the intelligence doing the projecting.

- In this post Mac addresses a subject that would eventually find its way into his Cryptoterrestrial hypothesis: the lack of physical evidence in UAP documentation and the perception (and/or suspended disbelief) on the part of Spooky and Ebe when it came to their need for entertainment. Inset left is great shot of Kurt Cobain and his sweet little kitty. This photo and more can be found in this article.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

"Well-intentioned as they are, proponents of animal uplift labor under the dubious assumption that there's something innately wrong (or at least existentially limiting) about animal-hood. On the other hand, anyone who's had a close relationship with an animal is bound to question such certainty. Sure, it might be nice to jam with my cats about quantum theory, but I sense they're quite content in their feline-hood -- and who am I to deprive them of that?

I'd go so far as to propose that animals are already engaging us in a meaningful dialogue, although perhaps not the sort of dialogue depicted in Brin's canon. That we've yet to understand our fellow mammals on their own terms remains an emasculating reminder that perhaps our "patronage" is neither needed nor desired."

- In this PB post, Mac addresses the peculiar topic of David Brin's animal "uplift" which ( via "Will we "uplift" animals to sapiency?") translates to: "Biological uplift describes the act of biologically enhancing nonhuman animals and integrating them into human and/or posthuman society."

In my opinion, Mac's understanding was right-on. My assessment would've been less diplomatic. If Brin can actually imply that animals lack "sapiency" then, obviously, Brin has never cared for an animal... nor even observed one. And, as it happens, animals have already been integrated into human society; not necessarily to their benefit.

Inset right above is one of many cat-related sci-fi book covers found here. For a fun forum page on sapient space-faring felines go here.

Inset left is a sweet little French tuxedo puss, designated #C341, who in 1964 became an astronaut. She had an electrode implanted in her skull. The electrode transfered her vital statistics to a database as she flew into outer space for 15 minutes. Sadly, while her mission was a success, lab animals are expendable. She did, however, eventually acquire a suitable name, Félicette... and, years later, due to the efforts of one compassionate man, she was given a memorial.

Question: how many expendable animals would it take to fulfill Brin's sci-fi fantasy? And would these biologically enhanced creatures have equal rights? For a good essay on animal intelligence and communication by sci-fi writer Judith Tarr, see here.

"Brin is one A short of a brain." (Charlie insisted I add that line.)

***

Aldous Huxley, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Ray Bradbury, H.G. Wells, Stephen King (who recently had another book banned in Utah), Philip K. Dick * (inset right), Robert A. Heinlein (who invented the word "grok"), H.P. Lovecraft, Isaac Asimov, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett - all of them have or have had feline companions. And that's just the tip of an iceberg which includes writers like Herman Hesse, Charles Baudelaire, Poe and numerous woman writers across the board. And this does not include the visual artists. For those, I've included the video at the end of the post. (Sources: Cats and Science Fiction Authors and The Relationship Between Writers and Their Cats.

 

As it was, when it came to science fiction, Mac was not so much interested in the female voices of sci-fi as he was the male half of the equation, but he wasn't alone.  Science fiction has been often been referred to as a "boy's club" in spite of the fact that numerous women are devoted sci-fi authors.

Two women writers he did admire, however, were Margaret Atwood (inset right; found in this article) and Ursula le Guin. And sure enough, both are and were "cat ladies," as are many women writers. But,  contrary to what you might imagine a stereotypical Cat Lady might be, know that they are amongst the happiest and most 
satisfied people presently living on this planet!

"Since I have a cat and a Time Machine, people naturally ask if the cat uses the Time Machine. He does; but not to transport him to a different part of the continuum. Cats can do that by themselves. Anybody who lives with a cat knows that at one time the cat is here; at another time, he is not. The transition from there to not there is imperceptible. (This transition may in fact have been what Schrodinger was trying to investigate in his famous thought experiment involving a cat and a box...)"

- Le Guin waxing fantastical on her blog about her cat Pard and the weirdness of cats in general... but, she may have been intuitive with her reference to Schrödinger's Cat, the cat who is forever neither dead nor alive... or, correctly, both here and there. Also see: Cat state. (Photo of Le Guin inset right found here.)

Which bring us to the flying cats Le Guin wrote about in her children's series Catwings. Why is it that Cats with wings seem so improbable... and, yet, so familiar? I'm reminded of owls which cats are sometimes compared with, and which recently became a new meme: Meowls! They're a hit on social media. See this Instagram page.

Apart from a weird avian connection - and I swear I've heard Charlie talking to wild birds - cats also share a couple of reptilian qualities... which may have led to their eventual persecution in the middle ages. There was, of course, their alleged connection with women and "witchcraft."

But, their true spookiness was exhibited in their eyes. Without those strange eyes with the vertical slits for pupils and which glow bright green in the dark - not to mention the presence of a third eyelid - cats might seem, well, normal. But, apart from the red fox and the slow loris we only find those same eyes in nocturnal reptiles. And, when cats open their mouths wide revealing fangs... they can appear quite demonic looking. It's part of their charm.

Inset left is Ray Bradbury with his spooky cat.

"In the following century Pope Gregory IX added his voice to the campaign against the evil cat. He was intent on stamping out a sect of Devil-worshippers in Germany who involved black cats in their rituals. This sect had taken its inspiration from the legend of the Nordic goddess of sexuality, Freya, written down in 1220. She was said to be drawn through the heavens by a pair of magnificent cats... This widely diffused negative attitude to the cat heralded a period of about three centuries of brutal feline persecution, in which cats all over Europe were tortured and killed."

So, not too surprisingly, the cats most feared and despised at the time of this medieval cat inquisition were solid black cats, the quintessential Halloween animal accompanying witches on their nocturnal flights. These met the same fates as the witches, burnt and tortured in ways that only very maniacal humans can devise. The strange thing was that if a black cat was a fond member of your household, it might be spared if it had a patch of white hair, known as the "angel mark." Otherwise, the cat was doomed.

The quote is found in the article: Why Medieval Cats Approved of the Plague by Desmond Morris, who theorizes that the Black Plague was karmic... just deserts for cruelly slaughtering innocent animals and humans. Ironically, the cats may have eradicated the rats before the plague took hold - had they not been slaughtered - which seems to have been their job from ancient times. Had an unspoken pact been broken? This video discusses why it is that cats were never completely domesticated. Rather they lent themselves out to human settlements to perform a crucial job. Moreover, every single domestic cat in the world originated from this same family of wild ancestors, Felis silvestris lybica.

Inset left is a remarkable self-portrait by a remarkable German actor and photographer, Herbert Tobias (1924–1982). He's given us a type of Janus face; it is impossible to focus on both the cat and Tobias at the same time. Our eyes flicker up and down from one to the other. This is another point in my cross-post where cats and Kurt Vonnegut meet. You see, Tobias was a German soldier in WWII sent to the Russian and/or Eastern Front. More of his story (and photographs) can be found at Berlinische Galerie and Lilium's Compendium.

Then again, if it means anything, Freyja, a Nordic goddess similar to Aphrodite, had cats that were considered to have been Norwegian Forest cats ...silver in color; not black.

But, it got a little crazier than that in Germany with a man named Franz Helm (c. 1500 – 1567) and his military manual, Buch von den probierten Künsten (Book of the practical arts).

"Create a small sack like a fire-arrow... if you would like to get at a town or castle, seek to obtain a cat from that place. And bind the sack to the back of the cat, ignite it, let it glow well and thereafter let the cat go, so it runs to the nearest castle or town, and out of fear it thinks to hide itself where it ends up in barn hay or straw it will be ignited."

- Illumination and text were sourced from Helm's Wiki page (see Rocket Cats). Realize,, however, that (literally) weaponizing animals was not a German invention; similar evidence was found in Scandinavian, Russian, and Chinese texts as well. Rocket 
cats - another example of "animal uplift"? ;-)

And, yet, after all of the above, have we really solved the enigma of our "mysterious others"?

***

"See these eyes so green

I can stare for a thousand years

Colder than the moon

It's been so long"

- Lyrics from Cat People (Putting out the Fire) written by David Bowie in 1982 in collaboration with Giorgio Moroder for the soundtrack of the film Cat People, essentially an erotic sci-fi/fantasy thriller, and a remake of a 1942 film of the same name. That being said, it was David Bowie's almost preternatural intoning of his song at the beginning of the film while black panthers cavorted in African trees against a golden sky that prevented it from becoming just another sex and gore festival. Bowie's voice, at its deepest and most provocative, set the hypnotizing tone of the story, which by itself, was mildly intriguing, but with the addition of Bowie - a brilliant coup on the part of Moroder - it became an instant cult classic. (See the trailer.)

I actually wasn't sure if Bowie liked cats. I only knew he was a cat. (More Bowie GIFs) However, after some research, Bowie was a friend to both cats and dogs. As for the photo inset right, it's source is a Facebook page I could not access. Is it real? Well, the cat might be. Regardless, it's perfect for this post, to which I think Mac would agree. Besides which, Bowie seemed to express a peculiar sentiment in his song which only recently was discovered to be true.

"It is said that in Ulthar, which lies beyond the river Skai, no man may kill a cat; and this I can verily believe as I gaze upon him who sitteth purring before the fire. For the cat is cryptic, and close to strange things which men cannot see... The Sphinx is his cousin, and he speaks her language; but he is more ancient than the Sphinx, and remembers that which she hath forgotten."

As H.P. Lovecraft so presciently wrote in 1920 in his story The Cats of Ulthar, our relationship with cats is very ancient. While we assumed cats were domesticated in Egypt 3000 years ago, it now seems apparent that they were never domesticated and merely insinuated themselves into the lives of the earliest agricultural civilizations in the Fertile Crescent around 10,000 years ago! (See: The Taming of the Cat.)

I can't say I believe that this 10,000 year symbiotic relationship between humans & cats was based wholly on vermin extermination however. It doesn't explain our current relationship with cats which has less to do with their hunting abilities and more to do with their companionship. I think Charlie (inset left) agrees but he's gotten a little impatient with the blogging process.

***

"Once upon a time, an artist who had painted a small and very beautiful picture placed it so that he could see it in the mirror. He said, 'This doubles the distance and softens it, and it is twice as lovely as it was before.'

The animals out in the woods heard of this through the housecat, who was greatly admired by them because he was so learned, and so refined and civilized, and so polite and high-bred, and could tell them so much which they didn't know before, and were not certain about afterward. They were much excited about this new piece of gossip, and they asked questions, so as to get at a full understanding of it. They asked what a picture was, and the cat explained.

'It is a flat thing,' he said; 'wonderfully flat, marvelously flat, enchantingly flat and elegant. And, oh, so beautiful!'"

- (NEW!) Excerpt from A Fable by Mark Twain.  Inset right is a noble Norwegian Forest cat sourced from a previous, related link.

***

As promised, here's an entertaining video by a man known only as Matt, who's compiled a a more comprehensive group of artistic cat people. Enjoy! For more of Matt's explorations go to Creative Deep Dents.

Also see the article: Famous Artists who had Cats as Muses.

Meanwhile, it's that time of year again... the Dog Days... in which fire seems to be the dominant element. It seems everywhere one looks Hell's a-poppin'. And, just when we thought things couldn't be worse.

Alas, Charlie has had enough. It's time for Cat TV and he's got his eye on the green Meowee bag. Maybe he's got the right idea. 

______________________________________________

* NEW! Article of interest: Philip K. Dick and the Fake Humans.

***

Mac, Spook and Ebe - illustration from The Cryptoterrestrials... - 2010, Mike Clelland.

💮

 In loving memory of Calligraphy Jones.