Juan Villoro
When there were no computers, cats were already virtual. They live and do not live with us. Their existence occurs next to the kibble plate and alternate sites to which we do not have access. This way of entering and leaving our lives made Julio Cortázar conjecture that cats are telephones; they approach us when they have something to communicate and then head off in other directions. It is not by chance that they have become the favorite pets of the networks because we do not always have the password to reach them, and they behave like a simulation of themselves.
The idea that cats have multiple lives comes from their elasticity and their peculiar way of circumventing the challenges of gravity, but also from their ability to inhabit parallel worlds from which they often return with their fur blown away.
In English, cats have nine lives, which Shakespeare celebrated in Romeo and Juliet. Poorer, Spanish-speaking countries took two lives from them. Even so, their existence is multiple; they do not need to assume an avatar in Second Life or an alias on the Internet to have another personality.
House felines retain traits of the remote species that gave them birth. Some meow until their owner turns on the sink faucet. This demanding gesture comes from their grandparents, the tigers, who used to drink the running water of rivers, cleaner than that of any puddle. José Emilio Pacheco eloquently wrote in his poem “Gato”: “Come, come closer / You are my chance / to caress the tiger”. Our domestic pet carries within it another possible animal: the remote tiger.
If cats coexist with humans, it is because they decided to domesticate themselves. They did so not with the submission of a species born for the barnyard or high pedigree competitions but with the detachment of one who is on the couch knowing he could be elsewhere. They suffered the rigors of the wild until their cunning convinced them that life was worth sharing with people who had a cow or milk in the refrigerator.
The cat enjoys the caresses that ruffle his fur but chooses when to receive them. Its purr is a triumph of will. Nature has found no better way to link bliss with free will.
For a long time, cats did not get as good a press as dogs, for they are not suitable for pulling ducks out of the water, driving blind people, pulling sleds, or detecting thieves. They lack the usefulness of those who take orders. They are companion animals, but they look at us with criteria ranging from strictness to annoyance. “Hear me as one who hears rain, / neither attentive nor distracted,” asks Octavio Paz. This is how cats hear, witnesses of the rain.
Certain countries have given them special status. In Rome, the Colosseum has become a sanctuary where cats enjoy the antipasti left by neighbors. In Japan, literature immortalized them in Natsume Soseki’s I Am a Cat. Mass culture added the lives of the cosmic cat Doraemon and Hello Kitty, the world’s merchandising queen. In Istanbul, they are so omnipresent that Orhan Pamuk describes the loneliness of a street by saying that there was not even a cat on it.
There are plenty of examples of the presence of cats. However, they occupied a less predominant place than dogs until the Internet changed things. On YouTube, they have more than 26 billion views. Although dog-related searches are higher, the viral effect of cats is four times higher. The explanation seems simple. Dogs stimulate interaction – they return the ball you throw them – while cats ask to be seen. For millennia, the walls of ancient Egypt enshrined their elegance. Now, the Internet creates the illusion that we are entering their lives. It is, of course, a fantasy, but it is shared by many.
Dog owners meet in parks. This socialization is impossible with pets that are reluctant to go with us. For the cat clan, the Internet serves the function of the dog park. We walk cats online, which helps to make friends (they introduce us to each other).
When a cat rubs its back against your leg, you feel you finally deserve its affection. Independent in the extreme, it reveals that you are its pet.
This was originally published in Spanish on October 29, 2021, by Reforma.