Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
Robert A. Heinlein
Despite the hedonists’ attempts, long before Christ, to find the meaning of life in pleasure, humans never arrived at happiness. At the current stage of development, they aren’t ready yet to live in pure pleasure. Dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine are all temporary stimulants, cancelled out by Homo sapiens’ craving for soul-searching and self-flagellation.
Cats are a different story. The whole point of their existence comes down to pleasure. They are so close to that goal that Aristippus and Epicurus would burn with envy. It’s actually more accurate to say they’ve already reached that ultimate goal, and now the very process of existing in absolute pleasure is transcendent.
Humans have always perceived the impossibility of experiencing a cat’s life firsthand in different ways. Ancient Egypt played it straight and simply deified these animals. Killing a cat was punishable by death. Islam went further than just taking a life. Offend a kitty and you don’t just lose your life to the glory of Allah, you’re also doomed to eternal afterlife discomfort. Not to mention that all the houris promised to the faithful for their pleasure are automatically reset to zero (مَنْ لَا يَرْحَمُ لَا يُرْحَمُ). Medieval Europe carried on the tradition of deifying felines. Societies prone to myth-making, of course, immediately suspected cats of ties to evil spirits. And so on: at every stage of human development, the image of the cat flickered in the “supernatural” section.In fact, from the cat’s position (or rather, superposition), it is both in the bathroom and not in the bathroom at the same time.
Even science couldn’t ignore the special place of cats in the universe. In Schrödinger’s thought experiment, the cat is both alive and dead until an observer steps in (quantum superposition). What scientists can’t even guess is that the cat is in a state of superposition in the ordinary “macro” world, too. Cat owners know that a cat keeps asking to be let into the closet or the bathroom. But as soon as the door opens, it either wants right back out or freezes at the crossroads. In fact, from the cat’s position (or rather, superposition), it is both in the bathroom and not in the bathroom at the same time. It’s just that in ordinary three-dimensional space the observer can’t see this superposition, so they form the only projection of reality available to ordinary consciousness. Nerds will mumble something about near-instant decoherence of many-atom objects and, as a result, the impossibility of superposition in the macro world. But you and I know how things really work.
A cat exists in its own reality (the Cat Universe, CU from here on), a large part of which touches ours (the ordinary three-dimensional one). The overlap covers processes tied to the cat’s own conscious choice: feeding, petting, play, etc. In other words, our Universe interacts most fully with the CU when the cat itself wants it to. The cat can’t distort the physical properties of our reality, but our perception reacts to the projection of the CU in different ways. For example, you’re sitting on the couch and a cat settles down nearby. If it doesn’t come onto your lap, it doesn’t need warmth and will sit a little way off. It seems to you that this “little way” is an arm’s length. You try to pet the cat… you’re a centimeter short. It’s the same illusion again: in reality this distance isn’t just infinitely bigger than it seems. It lies in a completely different dimension, which makes trying to pet the cat as silly as, say, trying to pinch an atom between your thumb and index finger.
That much is clear. But is there a way for a human to take something from the feline world, to at least try to live like the average cat? Of course. First, let’s look at what a house cat’s everyday life actually looks like. And try to compare it with what humans have.
First, some general points on how a cat sees the world.
For a cat, the world isn’t just limited to its personal existence, it is fully identical to it. Everything that happens, happens only in front of it and for its sake. Obviously everything animate and inanimate exists only for its benefit, but just in case, the cat backs up this confidence with dominant behavior. There’s no box you can’t sit in and tear to shreds, no top shelf you can’t jump onto and sleep on for 10 hours. Freshly washed clothes with no foreign smells make a great spot to lie down. Or sit down, which for a cat inclined to pleasure and rest is the same thing. Not for long, just for status. There are other things to do.
Sleep
Doctors and sociologists all over the world are sounding the alarm: the Earth’s population is sleep deprived. The performance of someone who slept even an hour less drops significantly. IT people know what I’m talking about. People in Singapore and Japan sleep 7 hours 24 minutes on average. The Netherlands is the luckiest: there, eyes stay closed for 8 hours 12 minutes on average (which is surprising, given you-know-what). And yet lack of sleep is no excuse for showing up to work later (I mean salaried work). And here lies the main flaw of the social contract, because a person who’s an hour short on sleep will do far more harm to the company than a person who came in an hour late. But in the complicated world of humans, you don’t talk about that. Because there are certain rules and so on.
A cat sleeps 16 to 20 (sixteen to twenty!) hours a day.
This state doesn’t match human sleep in the usual sense. We’re talking about the same duality in the cat’s states, but now within the ordinary physical world (the part of it that overlaps with ours). So a cat can be asleep and awake at the same time. Waking and sleep aren’t really separate for a cat in principle; most likely, in its sleep the cat deals with the same matters as in life: exploring corners, food, staring at one spot. And, again… sleep.
A cat uses its hours free from sleep far more productively than the average person. It doesn’t make plans six months ahead, doesn’t worry about everyday stuff and doesn’t eat itself up over unfulfilled dreams. There’s no time for that. We aren’t given to know what questions a cat works through in its hours of mental meditation. Only one thing is clear: trifles like the meaning of life are long behind it. And if you take even more down-to-earth things, like a mortgage, any comparison just seems comical.
Uncle Vasya dreamed of his own place all his life, saved up 100 salaries, borrowed money and accepted bags of cash as gifts from countless relatives. He spent his last on a two-room flat in Sukharevo (a Minsk suburb) and, following folk tradition, let the cat into the new home first. And what do we see? The cat steps over the threshold with the same disgust it would show crossing a vat of crap on a bridge as wide as a matchbox. It couldn’t care less about Vasya, Sukharevo or the bank loan at the refinancing rate plus 8%. Its main goal: settle into the new place as fast as possible, mark a couple of secret spots and carry on its comfortable existence in a multidimensional world. A world where both the two-room flat in Sukharevo and Vasily himself are mere phantoms, tertiary marks on the line of the universe, where time and space are fused into one to serve the great goal of the cat’s comfort and pleasure.
Cats and sexual energy
This is one of the most modern myths, invented as a defense mechanism against the unknowable nature of feline hedonism. Like, be careful, cat people: fall in love with a furry animal and that’s it, your manhood is off to the flea market!
Think the author made this up? Not at all:
“The Angora is very dangerous! Loves to and knows how to act as a vampire. If it falls asleep, it can drain too much sexual energy. Not recommended to put on your lap or chest.”
“The Maine Coon is very, very dangerous! Can drain sexual energy at a distance.”
So that’s how in the modern world, where the Hadron Collider and trashy reality TV coexist, cats get mystified, and not just black ones.
“Using sensors placed on a cat’s head, scientists have confirmed: a kitty, like any living organism, is nothing more than a portable bio-generator, and creates electromagnetic radiation around itself. When a cat comes into contact with a woman whose level of electromagnetic radiation is higher (especially during sexual arousal, ovulation, pregnancy), the cat pumps the ‘excess’ energy into itself.”
Of course, we all know that there’s a sucker born every minute (a catchphrase usually attributed to P. T. Barnum). But it seems to me that passages like these aren’t just a mocking way to monetize the stupidity of basic b… I mean, trusting girls. Somehow the cats themselves are mixed up in this, bored with existing in a perfect world with no worries and no intrigue.
Either way, we won’t get answers to these questions. Because we aren’t ready yet for the level of pleasure and harmony with the world that an ordinary house cat has.