The crooked 'Why'

Understanding cat hate

'My mum hates cats.'

It was said just like that, a matter of fact, no malice, just the cold truth. I was sitting in my living room, and my daughters and niece were milling around in the kitchen, readying themselves for a swim at our local beach. It was a glorious spring day, sunny and warm. It was one of those days pregnant with promise and the smell of coming summer. On these hope-filled days, my cat would unspool from the tight tuck of her winter sleep and could be found sprawled on the edge of my bed, her body long and lean, edging away from the slither of light and heat beaming in through the bedroom's north facing window.

My mum hates cats

My eldest was talking about how she missed her sweet furry babies, which she had reluctantly left behind to spend two weeks with us, 700 km from her new home in Melbourne. 'You should really think about adopting a cat,' I said to my niece. 'They are such a joy.'

My mum hates cats, she replied. Straight forward.

'She hates them because I love them', the voice in my head railed, that old well of resentment surging forward, pushing at my throat. I thought of all those small acts of sibling violence we have perpetrated against each other, over and over, into infinitum. The rawness of those injuries. I thought of my cat sleeping on my bed, her warm body, her soft purrs. How her nose turns pink when she is warm and content. How she reaches for me when she senses I am near. How she trusts me after years of togetherness. How she has learned to sheath her claws as she reaches out to me, her body lean and taut.

My mum hates cats

My stomach lurched.

'Why?' my eldest daughter asked. Her question was genuine, her voice low and soft.

Why?

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In my twenties, I lived in Sydney with my two elder sisters and my older sister's best friend. When I moved up from my small rural town, I was a lost and lonely country girl with few skills to equip me for life in the big city. I asked many questions, some inane, like 'Why are all these people at the mall at 12pm on a Monday', some essential and potentially lifesaving, like 'Why is there a yellow line on the train platform?'. The best friend of my sister, often fed up with my incessant questions, would respond with the infuriating quip, 'Y is a crooked letter, and you can't straighten it?'. I asked once why you couldn't straighten a 'Y', which really sent my sister's friend over the edge.

When I started my undergraduate arts degree and journeyed through honours and a PhD, I discovered that answering 'why' questions was indeed a crooked proposition. One of the reasons why I loved studying in the humanities, and history in particular, was because answering 'why' questions could take you on so many often divergent paths. Chasing down the response to 'why' often prompted further questions and more delicious searching. 'Why' is also a common question asked of undergraduate Arts students - why did the British colonise half the globe? Why did Paul Keating deliver his famous Redfern speech? For some students, it can be a deceptively easy question to answer. Moreover, nowadays, you can input your 'why' question into Google and receive an AI-generated response that you can regurgitate in tutorials. But your 'why' can also quickly evaporate like so much sea fog on a 35-degree day. In history, a 'why' question is not simply a 'why' question. Y is a crooked letter, and you can't straighten it.

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I hate cats

Why?

'Because I like dogs'

'Because cats are aloof and disloyal'

'Because dogs are heroic and cats are not. A cat never delivered lifesaving medicine to a stranded hiker on a mountainside.'

'Cats carry disease.'

'Cat kill birds, and I like birds more than cats' ( an actual person said this to me)

'I have always had dogs.'

'Because cats don't belong in Australia'.

'Cats kill 2 million native species a year.'

'There are too many cats'

'The only good cat is a dead cat.'

'The best use for a cat is a hat'.

'Evil bird-killers'

'Target practice'

'Keep your cat inside!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'

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The question of why we hate is underpinned by various historical forces and processes. Hate as an emotion manifest because we have attributed specific meanings to the object of our vitriol. The process of meaning-making is historically contingent and culturally situated. In his famous collection of essays, The Great Cat Massacre, Robert Darton posits that culture shapes our thinking. Darton argued that no matter how hard we try, we will always come up against 'the outer frame of meaning'. Our hatreds do not exist in and of themselves, they form within historically and culturally contingent environments. In 1988, Darton undertook an analysis of an event that occurred in 18th-century Paris; the ritual killing of cats by a group of printer’s apprentices. Part of why this made sense to the cat-killing apprentices was because of the bundle of meanings that had been attached to the ‘harmless but necessary cat’. In early modern Europe the cat had become associated with heretical women, the devil, witchcraft, magic and even sexual deviance. In 17th century France, cats had long been associated with these diabolical symbols, an association that was several centuries in the making.

Our hatred of cats has a history. We have hated them for hundreds of years, and it is vital we understand why.

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Too much of the contemporary discussions about cats in Australia operates within an ahistorical vacuum. Discussions about cat management, for example, often occur without interrogating how we got here or how we got to the point where we now consider cats a 'problem'. There is seldom any interrogation as to why we feel the way we do about cats or why, for example, it is so easy to laugh at suggestions to place a bounty on the heads of 'feral' cats ( this actually happened. See Alex Patton, 'Animals - Us and them - The cat catastrophe - pet or pest?', Big Ideas, ABC Radio National podcast). Why do many Australians applaud the wholesale slaughter of 'feral' cats and are comfortable publicly stating that the 'only good cat is a dead cat'. How the bloody hell did we get here?

The historian's crooked 'why' question is probably the most important question to ask when discussing cats in Australia. At least, it is a bloody good starting point. We need to interrogate our feelings in an intellectually rigorous way; we need to think carefully about why we feel the way we do. We need to better understand our emotions as products of our social and cultural world, not as simple trigger points for action. If you hate cats, you must ask yourself why and deeply and thoughtfully interrogate your response. Like most quests for knowledge in the humanities, you may never reach a satisfactory ending, and the road to get there may result in further questions. But, as historically produced and culturally situated beings, we must continue asking, interrogating, and probing. That 'why' may never be straightened. And that, my friend, is a good thing.

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When my daughter asked her cousin 'why’ on that hopeful spring day, my niece paused. 'I think it is because we have always had dogs', she responded haltingly. 'There are many people who don't like cats', I sighed. 'But many people haven't been loved by a cat either', I added, 'and nearly everyone changes their mind after being loved by a cat'. 'Maybe all you need is love', my youngest chimed in. Maybe.

But did I tell you that love also has a history…

Yours

Cat historian

Image: Poppy sleeping. How could you hate that face? Seriously!