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We infantilise cats as "fur-babies". Jam Sta Rosa/AFP/Getty Images
Back in the last century, “putting the cat out” was a definite thing. You might remember the excellent zeugma from Flanders & Swann’s Have Some Madeira, M’Dear: “he hastened to put out the cat, the wine, his cigar and the lamps.” Cats across the country were shoved out the back door to roam, like Ted Hughes’s tomcat, “nightly over the round world of men”. We saw cats, perhaps, more as they see themselves: as resilient, free-roaming predators, at home in the world.
No longer. When my wife recently accidentally left one of our two new cats outside overnight — she found it mewing pitiably at the kitchen door in the morning — she was racked with guilt. I hunt the house to make sure they are safely indoors before turning in of an evening. My mind roams to images of my cats being torn to bits by the urban foxes that slink along the fence, of their being scragged after accidentally invading the territory of a local tom (that happened to my old cat, and the vet’s bills were horrendous), or… of worse.
Our digital culture is saturated with cat adoration — the small portion of the internet not devoted to pornography or political hate-speech is mostly taken up with pictures of cats. But it’s also blooming, like squid-ink, with a related anxiety — that of cats as the objects of malice and cruelty. Rather than being independent creatures, cats now occupy a peculiar position in our minds: we think of them as (God help us) “floofs” and “fur-babies”, cuddly creatures utterly dependent on us for protection; but also as being hard to protect because, well, they’re cats. Unlike dogs, they go where they like and do what they like. It’s a recipe for paranoia.
And where there’s paranoia, there’s a buck to be made feeding it. ITV’s recent How To Catch A Cat Killer told the story — an easy heartstring-tugger for the likes of me — of a spate of cats being stabbed in a quiet close in Brighton, and of the Facebook group of local cat-lovers which was set up to warn other owners of the danger, and even ended up helping to track down the culprit. Where vigilantes, in the traditional Hollywood account of it, tend to be flint-faced, damaged, solitary men with gravelly voices and an unsmiling sense of purpose (think Charles Bronson, Jack Reacher, Batman, Rorschach or The Punisher), the acceptable real-life face of them is now a mildly out-of-shape middle-aged cat lover in a sensible jumper, specs illuminated by the glow of a last-generation laptop.
Audiences eat this stuff up. This show was very obviously a low-stakes UK reprise of 2019’s surprise Netflix hit Don’t F*** With Cats, which followed an ad hoc group of Facebook friends tracking down a sicko who posted a video of himself suffocating a pair of kittens to death. Their collective digital sleuthing — every pixel was combed for clues as to the killer’s location, from soft furnishings to plug sockets — closed in on a Walter Mitty character called Luka Magnotta, a Canadian porn actor and wannabe model who had created an online persona for himself as fabulous as it was fictitious. Far from being a harmless weirdo, though, Magnotta showed all the signs of psychopathy — and went on to kill a human being before the police caught up with him.
The villain of ITV’s show had a bit less of Tom Ripley about him. He was a nightclub bouncer known to his colleagues as “Creepy Steve”, and though he stolidly denied the cat-killings in the face of all the evidence, he didn’t show any great flair as a master-criminal. He was clearly caught on CCTV, pretty early on, stabbing a cat. He had a knife in his flat contaminated with cat hair and blood. His mobile phone placed him at the location of 14 of the attacks. And his internet search history was full of things like “Dog killing cat”, which in the context is the sort of thing that tends to raise the long eyebrow of the law. Moriarty, at least, would have known how to use Safesearch Mode while planning his next heist.
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SubscribeWhen we lock up our cats to protect them from statistically very-rare events, how will the next generation of cats fare in life? Will they amuse themselves with harmless, unchallenging indoor pursuits, that fail to build character? Will they be anxious and neurotic as a result? Are we raising a generation of feline snowflakes? Will Jonathan Haidt have to write a new book about it?
Made me laugh, thank you.
My cats have the use of a catflap. We all sleep soundly when and where the fancy takes us.
Always makes me laugh when our cat races through the chip-triggered cat flap escaping from another cat and then turns round to see if the other cat is still chasing it.
In cat logic, I suppose she must think the other cat is too scared to come through the cat flap.
A psychopathic killer entering someone’s property and murdering them in front of their cat would result in said cat demanding food. On realising neither person in the room was capable of feeding it, it would leave and never return. This goldfish-like inability to be in any way loyal (“Fluffy isn’t our pet, humans are Fluffy’s pets! Ha! Ha! Ha!”) coupled with the way they are wired up to annihilate all defenceless wildlife inside a 3km radius, is celebrated only by weirdos on the internet whom you cannot trust.
P.S. twist: psycho killer goes home to let his collie out.
I dispute the notion that any animal can be held to be at fault. You might just as well blame the weather for being the weather. Animals simply obey the rules – As does the weather.
I forgot to mention sense of humour.
The question is: Which one of us has the sense of humour.
The one with the fewest dead baby sparrows in the utility room. I’ve just checked and I have none. What about you?
I don’t have a utility room. I am so working class.
The loft then where you guys keep your racing pigeons .
I don’t have racing pigeons in my loft. In fact I don’t have a loft. I don’t have a utility room. And, incredible as it may seem, I don’t have a villa in Tuscany. I am indeed, the real thing.
People are animals too.
Witches had their cats in old folklore and they were also seen as the ‘Devil’s familiar’ (cf. the cat that curls up on Harry Lime’s shoes in the film version of ‘The Third Man’ (‘He only ever liked Harry.’ says Lime’s girlfriend)). Their solitary behaviour was also held to indicate this, and their thick, soft fur was taken as a symbol of ‘luxurious’ sexuality and promiscuity.
Many killers practice their art on animals. The move onto human prey depends on the context which makes an interesting question – do folks who like beheading others hone their skills in their particular version of abattoirs?
There are questions that can be asked about a killer’s choice of victim. For instance why should cats be a frequent victim of this type of offence but (as far as I know) dogs only rarely?
One can deduce fairly easily why a serial killer might choose women as victims (previous rejection or maybe an imputation of immorality within a male favouring subculture, or anger at supposed social favouritism in a jobs market and so on). But why do many mass-shooters choose young children as their victims?
Deranged man murders a few cats – outrage and significant expenditure of time and treasure to convict the offender.
Millions of cats out murdering the wildlife every night? That’s entirely ok.
Weird.
I actually think more people hate cats for their environmental impact, than hate humans for their vastly more destructive behaviours. I also suspect a correlation between cat hating and indifference to human-caused destruction.
(I do not intend to understate the massive damage cats do… especially those dumped by humans).
No. I definitely hate humans for their vastly more destructive behaviours – they should license, neuter/spay, collar/(big)bell & microchip all cats.
Hate cats?..not so much.
100% agree
About time someone made this very relevant point !
The real killers are the cats. Domestic and feral cats kill millions of birds, small reptiles and other small mammals every year. They should be kept inside for that reason.
They should be neutered until in a genreation or two, they have been completely erradicated from domestic possession. After that, all strays should be shot.
Once again mystified by the author of ‘Write To The Point: How To Be Clear, Correct and Persuasive on the Page’. Thought by the title it might be satire or something, maybe.. After reading I have absolutely no idea. Does this essay have a point?
I thought from the title Leith was going to talk about the serial killers known as cats, killing g-d knows how many birds a year.
And mice. And rats.