The otherworldliness of cats
This post is mostly just for fun, and I drew the line at calling it the transcendence of cats, but bear with me. It is in part inspired by a talk/book launch I went to at the National Library last week, where Susannah Fullerton spoke on her new book Great Writers and the Cats Who Owned Them. I was going to resist the purchasing of another book at that event, but the talk was so interesting that I succumbed, as it includes a good splash of history and literary biography of writers of interest. So of course I then had the book it signed for my furred companions.
As many readers will know, during 2023 I acquired two cats, Ebenezer at six years old, and Chesterton as a kitten. They have certainly brought curiosity and affection to my life. Right from the beginning I said that having these felines in my house felt a little like I was living with creatures from another dimension, as they padded silently around my house in the night, reacting to things I couldn’t detect. Cats can hear things humans can’t hear (I believe they can even hear an octave higher than dogs), smell things humans can’t smell and even see things, especially at night, that humans can’t see. They have very fast reaction times because their visual frame rate is so much higher than humans.
Throughout history cats have been viewed as somewhat otherworldly - being considered spiritual and intuitive and able to see into other dimensions. People have believed they could guard homes against negative energies and unseen spirits, seemingly interpreted from the way they will fixate on or hiss at empty spaces. (Having read that idea in searching around before writing this post, I thought about the times that Ebenezer has walked into the room and hissed for no reason, and now I am wondering …)
Cats are also thought to promote healing, reduce stress and aid in recovery from physical or emotional distress. Curiously there is some science in this as the frequency at which cats purr does actually have physical healing properties and can even increase human bone density.
As we’re probably all aware cats were at one time considered the “familiars” of witches (and single women who kept cats were often believed therefore to be witches - so watch this space ha ha). They were thought to indicate the presence of evil - either of the devil himself or a witch in disguise. This conflicts of course with the notion that they can ward off negative energies and unseen spirits, so it’s a choose your own understanding of that one.
Cats are generally a little enigmatic and mysterious, with a good intuition. They move around the house quietly, not being very outwardly expressive, with an air of independence and confidence, and it is not easy to get them do something they don’t want to (especially not my Ebenezer!). Yet every now and then they reveal just how observant and intelligent they are in some surprising response.
So, without taking any of this too seriously, I think one of the many benefits of cats in my life is realising that other of God’s creatures we inhabit this globe with may have very different perceptual experiences of it (which we can never really confirm obviously as we can’t get inside a cat’s experience - did you know there is a famous philosophy paper by Thomas Nagel called “What is it like to be a bat?”). They are reminders to me that there is more going on in the world than simply what I can perceive, though what exactly that is may be still open to question.
(If you are looking for something a little more serious to read, this post Bored with the Miracle from Desert and Fire is a fitting and beautiful follow on from my previous one.)