The Cat: Fetish Animal of Voluntary Servitude
CHARLES DANTEN, DVM, M.A.
Those who want an animal in order to project a certain strength and impose respect and fear choose one that radiates power — something intimidating, aggressive, large, and strong. Others want an animal because it is unusual, strangely beautiful, novel, bizarre, captivating, stimulating, scandalous, exotic, and prestigious. As we all know, people project onto their animals the qualities they would like to have — or believe they already possess. Loving oneself through the perceived qualities of one’s pet is, without a doubt, a form of narcissism.
That’s just how humans are.
There’s nothing we can do about it.
So, doctors and surgeons love mastiff bulldogs; macho types go for fighting dogs like pit bulls, Rottweilers, and Dobermans; nature lovers (think Jack London) prefer Malamutes, Huskies, and Samoyeds; dominants choose German Shepherds; and those who dream of nobility and elegance opt for Afghan Hounds and royal poodles. So many clichés that delight psychologists, yet which also contain a large grain of truth.
But what about the cat?
Who actually loves cats?
Or rather, who loves themselves through it?
Who sees themselves reflected in it?
Since the 18th century, its popularity has only grown, at the expense of the dog’s — to the point that today it has become far more popular than its rival. This is quite surprising when you remember that before its change in status, the cat was purely a working animal, used solely to hunt vermin and nothing else. Despised and tormented at the slightest opportunity, people would even go so far as to stuff a dozen of these poor creatures into a sack and burn them alive in the Saint John’s Day bonfires. And that’s putting it mildly.
So, what happened?
How do we explain this radical about-face?
Ethnologists and sociologists lose themselves in conjecture. The more pragmatic among them attribute the cat’s popularity to its size, which is far better suited to urban living; there’s no need to take it outside to do its business, and it costs less to feed than a dog. Others believe it’s because the cat is quiet, independent, and perfectly comfortable with the conditions imposed on it. It loves — and this is undoubtedly its greatest quality — being stroked by its owners, who find genuine comfort in the act. Its purring, moreover, has the ability to soothe tormented souls. In short, according to sociologists, the cat would be the perfect companion animal thanks to the qualities listed above.
But another explanation for the cat’s popularity is plausible.
It is entirely possible that in a democracy where the human-rights values of liberty, equality, and fraternity are held in high esteem, cat lovers project these very qualities onto their animal. To their eyes, the cat becomes a living incarnation — a kind of symbolic embodiment — of what they are or aspire to be: fervent humanists devoted to freedom, equality, and brotherhood.
In other words, with the large-scale democratization of impulses that began in the 18th century — whose distinctive feature was to replace conditioning by the stick with conditioning by the carrot — the cat has become increasingly popular because its very nature lends itself perfectly to a declawed tyranny exercised through affection in the form of rewards.
At least, that is the impression it gives its owners at first glance. Its discretion, silence, cleanliness, manageable and easily controlled size, purring, and love of being petted — and on these points the sociologists are absolutely right — make it the ideal companion animal, at least for the most docile subjects. The others are generally destroyed at a young age. In any democratic system, a process of selection takes place; it’s only natural, and the least obedient and docile individuals are gradually eliminated along the way.
Unlike the dog, the cat hardly needs any active discipline. Once declawed and sterilized, it is, so to speak, pacified. It doesn’t need to be put on a leash either, since it almost never leaves its apartment. Inside its territory, it is more or less free to go wherever it pleases. Some cats even have access to the outdoors.
As is the case for humans living in a democracy, this animal is subjugated with a minimum of apparent force. It gives its owners — who see themselves reflected in it — the illusion that they are not being dominated, that the cat is there freely and voluntarily, that it delights in its condition and does not suffer from it, to the point where it actually begs for more.
This is an extremely flattering state of affairs for the masters, who can exploit a living being in perfect peace of mind without offending their libertarian convictions or the humanist self-image they have crafted for themselves. But make no mistake: the regime of caresses and ultra-appetizing kibble enhanced by chemical flavor boosters — in other words, the carrot regime that prevails in Western societies — is far more debilitating than one might think at first glance. For cats with no outlet, no access to the outdoors, who suffer from boredom and lack of exercise; for those who never get to exercise their predatory instincts; for those who cannot dispel the chronic anxiety triggered by the emotional dependency that this avalanche of petting and treats creates in a very short time — the drama is poignant.
In fact, an exclusive carrot-based regime infantilizes this animal to an extreme degree. In the adult cat, this larval state manifests in an astonishing variety of neurotic behaviors: chronic purring, litter box issues, morbid obesity, chronic bladder and colon diseases, wool-sucking (the “bear tic”), alopecia, psychogenic polydipsia, compulsive licking, and self-mutilation.
Naturally, as one always says in such cases, any resemblance to humans is purely coincidental!
Few people connect these illnesses to the carrot regime, mainly due to ignorance of feline ethology, but also because in our culture cruelty and the will to power are generally dissociated from the world of affection and pleasure. For these reasons, the cat passes for the equivalent of a perfectly well-adjusted freethinker.
It has become more popular than the dog because, in the old democracies — especially in Japan, where the art of passive domination has nearly reached perfection — the carrot regime now far outweighs the stick regime that we more readily associate with dogs.
A democracy that has reached maturity does, in fact, rely almost exclusively on pleasure as a means of controlling impulses. This explains why consumerism is so overwhelmingly dominant in a democracy — a form of subliminal dictatorship, a soft totalitarianism described with great precision by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World:
“The perfect dictatorship would be a dictatorship that had the appearance of democracy, a prison without walls in which the prisoners would not even dream of escaping. A system of slavery in which, thanks to consumption and entertainment, the slaves would love their servitude…”
In short, it is therefore the love of their own servitude that cat lovers project onto their favorite fetish animal.