"The reason why kittens are so cute is because they can't speak."
I heard that at the recent "Talk Show Conference", you were ridiculing the "sucking cat" daily life again. Let's restrain the "idiot" eyes that look at us a little, a little less intelligent... Although the people next door don't talk much, humans always seem to find it more difficult to understand than cats, after all, we don't seem to be so enthusiastic. If you had a chance to talk, what would you like to know?
Talk about cat breeds? Report yourself to the house, help interpret to see which cats are more docile and sticky, and which are more withdrawn and cold? Or which parenting style will make our hair smoother? Or take stock of the traces of those "Internet celebrity cats" who are active on social media? If that's all, then there's really nothing to talk about, these are all questions of human interest, why should we care about the luster of hair, or what kind of personality is likable? What's more, many people probably think that we exist to be "cute".
The Secret History of Cats, by Baba the Kitten / Paul Kudenali, translated by Li Lei, | Wenhui Publishing House, October 2022.
If you're really curious about us, you might as well squat down first. Perhaps you will find that looking back at the times we have gone through together from a different perspective, it may not be as "self-righteous" as you thought before. For example, humans always feel that they domesticated us, but in fact, we domesticated ourselves, and we really go back to the fact that we were "partnerships".
Moreover, many shovelers are always worried that we will accidentally run out of the house and cannot find our way home like dogs, as if once we leave home, we will not be able to take care of ourselves. In fact, hundreds of years ago, our companions sailed across the seven oceans and flew thousands of feet into the sky.
Oh yes, humans are always willing to compare us with dogs, thinking that we are suspicious and cold by nature, and not so loyal. Have you ever wondered where this statement comes from? After all... the "cat in question" never admitted it. In the public impression, we are always capricious, but in detail, it has always been human beings who are capricious. Just like the paragraph mentioned at the beginning, if it is too difficult to understand each other, at least, let's not hurt each other.
"Now you are taking care of us,
We were the ones who took care of you."
Mint-flavored small fish crackers, all kinds of neck clothes, luxury version of the litter box, today's cats seem to have to do nothing, can easily win the hearts of humans. Just because we look like human cubs and don't need to please like dogs, we can stimulate human protection, no wonder there is a saying that calls us "cat owners". In fact, it can be heard that there is a bit of self-deprecation and arrogance in this, in the end, human beings still regard themselves as our "guardians" and claim the responsibility of "caregiving".
But there is a problem that needs to be reconsidered, humans have always felt that they have domesticated us. Excuse me, but in fact we domesticated ourselves. There is a French anthropologist named Marcel Mauss, yes, the brother who boasted that "there is no such thing as a gift in this world," and he also asserted that cats are the only animals that have successfully tamed humans. Hey, we actually have no intention of arguing who "tamed" whom between us, but human beings are always too self-conscious, monopolizing historical contributions in past narratives, and never mentioning the contributions of other species. In fact, in the early society, we were really looking after you.
This has to mention the ancestor of today's domestic cat, the "Libyan cat" (Felis silvestris lybica), known as the African wild cat. It doesn't look like the cat in your living room, slightly larger, with a speckled yellow-brown fur, and they're fierce and dangerous hunters active in North Africa. North Africa sounds a bit distant, doesn't it? In fact, it is also recorded in the Book of Poetry: "Han Le Han Tu... There are bears and tigers, there are cats and tigers, Qing Lingju, Han Yao Yanyu", once compared us to large animals such as tigers, dogs and bears, but there is a misunderstanding here, big cats evolved only 3 million years ago, and Libyan cats have adapted to the environment as early as 13 million years ago, so don't say that we are "miniature" tigers.
A Short History of Human "Smoking Cats", by Abigail Tucker, translated by Huang Zhuqin, Chuchen Culture | CITIC Press, April 2018.
At that time, the Libyan cat was in good shape and had strength that was not commensurate with its size, and was the king of survival in the wild. In contrast, humans at the end of prehistoric times had just begun to experiment with farming, stumbling to reserve surplus food to resist the impermanence of the four natural disasters. Maybe you have a way to deal with the threat of large animals, but you are helpless in the face of rats and mice that come and go without a trace, these rodents that waste food happen to be the wild game of Libyan cats, and they do not lack the courage to break the ice and go deep into your dwelling, so humans and our ancestors have secretly made a "partnership contract", you help eliminate the threat of large animals, they are responsible for killing those troublesome thieves.
As you all know in the second half of this story, the original village gradually prospered and expanded, becoming what became a unified Egypt, and one of the birthplaces of your so-called civilization. The Egyptians remembered the contribution of the Libyan cat and worshipped it as a god. As they got to know each other better, they were surprised to find that in addition to catching mice, cats seemed to have some kind of a priori mysterious powers, which could predict changes in the weather and predict the coming of earthquakes. In fact, it is really not "magic", just because our sensory sensitivity is higher. But anyway, the Egyptians did pin their desire to predict the future on us, and we began to appear on the back of the mirror, in order to reflect "evil"; Appears on amulets and bronze rocking instruments, symbolizing the protection of life; Even the famous Sphinx statue associates the pharaoh with the body of a feline and "cares" for the people of the land.
"Egyptian Sightings", French scholar Joe Maier came to Luxor in the early 19th century, recorded this silent guardian, showing the loyalty of real felines.
Cats are also written into the creation myth that circulates in Egypt. You've probably heard that cats have nine lives, so they won't take it seriously, right? This is, of course, just legend! It is said that at the beginning of the opening of the universe, everything in heaven and earth was still in chaos, and the sun god Ra ended this impasse, and the big male cat finally defeated the great serpent Apophis with one paw, and life in the world began to multiply. Although Ra was a male cat, he gave birth to other gods, the first being Shu, the god of air, and Tefnut, the god of lakes, who combined to give birth to the earth god Geb and the god Nut, and later had two sons and two daughters, so that the life was two, two became four, four became eight, plus the male cat La, nine lives were aligned.
This kind of almost fanatical reverence is unimaginable today, and look at the hilarious videos circulating on social media that record us "rolling over" at dinner, which is "great disrespect" in ancient Egypt. Forget it, smile after laugh, our energy is not so small, as long as we don't rise to some "harmless" treatment with a smile, we should be a kind of kindness. But don't forget that the Egyptians have a motto: "Don't laugh at a cat." ”
The Cat God and the Lion God, carved by Bernard de Monforton in 1719, depicts the enormous influence of felines on the spiritual life of the Egyptians.
"Don't let that poor cat run out"?
Although today's domestic cats are no longer as fierce as Libyan cats, they still retain some survival instincts in their bones. Many shovel officers have a habit of subconsciously closing the door when entering and leaving, and once we look at the hidden door, there is always a voice exclaiming: "Damn, don't let that poor cat run out." "This love is somewhat too heavy to bear... In fact, if you open the "cat history" to see, those cats who have gone to the sky and entered the sea may make people "drop their jaws".
Introduce a friend, the famous cat sailor Trim in history. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, this black male cat with white spots on his chest followed the ship to sea, first to Australia, and then across the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic oceans, making it a veritable seafaring cat that circumnavigated the world.
"The Secret History of Cats" with pictures.
Speaking of which, cats have actually begun to go to sea since ancient times, they have boarded the Phoenician galleys and followed the Egyptian nobles on voyages. At that time, the hull of the ship was mostly wooden, and rats could easily exploit loopholes, and if they stole the few grains in the cabin, or gnawed on the piles, they could cause disaster. Therefore, among the crew members necessary to go to sea on a boat, there will always be a place for cats. Despite this tradition, Triem's bravery is extraordinary. The cat was even born on an exploration ship in the South Pacific. It is said that when he was a child, he played on the deck and accidentally climbed over the railing and fell into the sea, and when the crew found out in a hurry, they turned their heads and saw that it had swam through the sea and jumped onto the rope of the mast, seemingly looking down on the panic of humans.
This innate ability to play tricks impressed the British explorer Matthew Flinders. Trim is not only very good at his own qualities, but also has a great team spirit, he is good at navigation, he can monitor the movements of rodents on board, and he is the emotional bond that holds the entire crew together, although he occasionally jumps on the table and robs sailors of rations, but these become the spice of the long time at sea. They accompanied each other on their voyage for four years and produced the world's first full map of Australia.
What's even more interesting is that Trim seems to really belong to the sea by nature. Flinders once boarded it in London after getting off the boat, have you heard that dogs will "tear down the house", but did you not think that cats would too? Yes, Trim, who smells the air without a trace of salt, is about to destroy his home... Forced by the situation, Flinders took it back to the ship again. As a result, during that journey, the ship was suspended in Mauritius on suspicion of maritime robbery, and the captain was suspected of being a "pirate" and sentenced to seven years in prison; The punishment for the "accomplice" Trim was also not light, and he was sentenced to "disembark and become a domestic cat". Can this be tolerated? Of course it slipped away, humans couldn't catch it, and then it was never heard from. Probably, it came from the waves and returned to the waves.
"The Secret History of Cats" with pictures.
It is also somewhat coincidental that in human logic, there is no difference between going to the sea and going to heaven. Trim's bravery makes you forget that every cat actually has its own personality, don't always take it for granted. Apparently, the gray cat Kiddo, who rose from the horizon, was not so happy.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, humans were still obsessed with flying machines across the Atlantic. After a series of failures, in 1910, the Airship America once again carried "seven crew members" on the journey to the sea of stars. Yes, it includes the base bean that is not so fanatical about it. Its boarding was purely accidental, and the crew continued the inertia of "going to sea", feeling that this journey could not be separated from the protection of cats, and it happened that Kidou also had experience at sea. But as the altitude numbers climbed, Kidou gradually became impatient, "howling like a squirrel in a cage and running around."
At that time, that airship was equipped with the earliest radios. The captain shouted into the microphone in anger: "Roy, come and catch this damn cat!" This made the first (air) broadcast in human history, and the protagonist of the radio sound waves emitted from the air turned out to be a wonderful "flying cat". That voyage didn't go through, but Kidou became famous overnight. So much so that in the next attempt, the new captain of Wei Eyeball brought it to the airship again, but this failure was fatal, and all the crew members, including Kidou, died in the sea. Looking back now, Kedou did not die because he "ran out", but the opening and closing of that door, which was never decided by us.
The feud between the cats and the starmen?
Who do you think of when you think of "best friends of humanity"? What most likely appears in my mind is the image of the Wang Xingren next door. After all, they seem loyal and enthusiastic, and we always seem to be a little lazy and dissociated. This is the habit of different species, but there are always some cat-misogynists who often rise these to "cat attacks", establishing an either-or contrast between us and the Wang Xingren, where does this-for-tat "cat and dog dispute" begin? After all, we never admitted it.
Looking back, the standard-bearer of this movement is no stranger, and his work still reinforces people's stereotypes of animals today, spanning more than 400 years, this person is the naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc from France. Haven't heard of the name? You will be familiar with his title, and people often call him "le comte de Buffon" (Count of Bufon). In 1749, Bufon's Histoire naturelle was published, and much of today's anthropomorphic analysis of the behavior of cats and dogs can be traced back to this. In Bufeng's view, the dog gathers "all the remarkable inner virtues," waits faithfully, selflessly, tirelessly for instructions, and unswervingly carries them out. Unlike the love that dogs give, "cunning" cats are never willing to condescend unless it is beneficial to themselves, cats are not willing to look people in the eye, and are "suspicious and malicious" by nature.
The news of the 1898 panic caused by the demon cat in the U.S. Capitol was published in several newspapers that year, along with a reproduction of the depiction of the demon cat by the painter.
This work immediately became a gospel for cat-misogynists after its publication. Among the readers, the little emperor Napoleon Bonaparte is definitely a "diehard fan". Napoleon's love for dogs is evident from a phrase he said in the court, he once threatened that "there are two kinds of loyalty, the loyalty of the dog and the loyalty of the cat", implying that if someone wants to cultivate the court, it is better not to have the nature of a "cat". It is no wonder that the upper part is good, the lower will be tendent, the city of Paris once rampant rats, hearing this, Napoleon once said contemptuously that "this is an advanced era, there is no need to use outdated methods", but whether it is a mousetrap or rat poison, it has little effect, or the efficiency is too low, or the rodent extermination is far less effective than exterminating people.
Noticed? All this "stigmatization" about us actually points to the pitiful vanity of some people. The French philosopher Rousseau did break some truths, speculating that the motives for hatred of cats were actually derived from an authoritarian instinct, and these people were jealous of our attitude of refusal to be slaves. Otherwise, how can the "interpretation" of the facts themselves be reversed overnight?
In the late Enlightenment, the "negative qualities" we once had had another explanation.
Cats are "treacherous"? The sharp-tongued Maupassant joked that this is exciting, and the cat's "cloudy" personality continues to arouse human conquest. Baudelaire, the poet who wrote The Flower of Evil, even compared the caressing of a cat to the desire for a lover. Don't think crookedly! He is saying that we activate the sexual, unrestrained and stress-free area of his mind, which keeps the inspiration for creation.
During World War I, the kitten assisted in peacekeeping as part of Company B of the French 361st Gendarmerie. The little one became a moment of warm companionship in his horse racing career.
Cats are "cool"? The French poet Gautier disagreed. He wrote an essay about his decades of observations of cats, even the title was "deafening" – "Conquérir l'amitié d'un chat est chose difficile" ("Conquérir l'amitié d'un chat est chose difficile"). He explained that cats do not easily become friends with people unless they feel that you are worth it, and cats always adhere to their habits, have an unshakable sense of order, and never do anything for you that seems unreasonable to it, thus adding a sense of distance. Listen, it's really "cat blushing", and it doesn't have to be so flattering us. After all, our personalities have never changed for thousands of years, and what has changed has always been your interpretation of us. Who is "capricious"?
End
Capricious is a person, not a cat
If it's just capricious, forget it, after all, nature is like this, there is really no need to force it. But your capriciousness, which often directly affects the fate of our race, is a bit too much.
Take temples as an example, nowadays, many temples seem to have become a gathering place for cats, and I heard that cats who want to see Fayuan Temple need to queue up to make reservations. But for a long time, the temple has always felt that we are "obscure". It is rumored that at the funeral of the Buddha in the past, representatives from all sides came to pay respects and bowed their heads in silence, but at the critical moment, the cat pounced and bit a mouse to death. This incident made the Buddhist family disgusted, feeling that killing was contrary to the teachings they advocated, and stray cats were not welcome in monasteries everywhere. But later, many temples found that the precious books in the courtyard were seriously eaten by rats, and had to welcome the cats into the door. Fickle humans turn a species away because of a rumor, only to change their tune when they turn their heads and "ask for a cat."
A cat and a girl on a Christmas card in 1890, designed by Polish printer Louis Prang. At that time, the cat returned to the arms of humans.
Fortunately, this time it was just a restriction on our area of activity. The stigmatization of cats in the Middle Ages almost drove the entire population to a corner, and it can even be said that the darkness of the Middle Ages also means a "great reckoning" in the "history of cats".
This emotional turn was foreshadowed as early as the fourth century AD, when the turmoil first began with sectarian rivalry. At that time, Christians were determined to distance themselves from the beliefs of their ancestors, and everything related to paganism was swept into the garbage, and cats, especially black cats, were most admired by pagans and thus symbolized misfortune and evil. But this stigma was still in words in the early days, and at best it was intended to dismantle the human affection for cats since ancient Egypt. In the Middle Ages, rumors intensified, we were accused of serving the devil and stealing people's souls, and even the cries of heat were misinterpreted as the voices of the lord of hell. Even in Germany, heresy was called "Ketzer", meaning cat. This extreme confrontation brought us a series of bad lucks, the most notorious of which was the medieval cat burning movement.
"In the Gathering", another lithograph by Plant. It wasn't until the 19th century that artists began to make cats cute images.
At that time, a group hysteria was popular in Europe, and in human terms, patients squeezed their eyebrows and shook their heads as if they had "lost their souls", which the locals called "St. Vitus Chorea" (St. Vites' Chorea). Vitus’s Dance）。 Ironically, humans feel that all this outbreak originated from black cats roaming the streets of the city, so on the eve of St. John's Day, the cat was hung in a cage and thrown into the fire, and the innocent cat became a container for human lust, the embodiment of imaginary enemies. In France alone, 5,577 cats were killed. This "Great Purge" also lasted for more than 500 years. And humans have also paid for this behavior, when the cat was thrown into the fire one after another, the black rats in the city also began to flood, and the hope of human rescue was also reduced to ashes, and the Black Death that ravaged European cities made the already cloudy Middle Ages more depressed.
Although you are now "shovel officers" and we have become "cat owners", it is difficult to say whether that memory will be carved into the genes for a long time and become a deep motivation under the iceberg. If you see a cat you don't know and want to lean over and touch it, but it is instantly alert, or even runs away, don't be surprised. After all, history teaches us too many lessons, and strangers extend their hands, and many times release not love. In fact, what we need is never a temple, nor do we care about any flattery, since ancient times, all we want is a gentle touch, some kind words and a little meal. It's always much simpler than humans think.
Author/Shen Lu
Editors/Zhang Ting, Wang Qing
Proofreader/Yang Xuli