Harringay’s station cat – a white cat named
Snowy – is a minor celebrity in my area. He has around 5,000 Twitter followers
on an account ghost-written by an unnamed local. The account details Snowy’s
life as he prowls his small dominion, chats with the local coffeeshop owners,
and occasionally goes on drugs-fuelled benders. I see him almost every day.
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| One of Snowy's more interesting escapades |
Until last weekend, when Snowy’s owners
packed up and moved to Croydon, taking their famous feline with them. In a
stroke Snowy became a nobody. Just a cat, unknown and unrecognized, like any
other in South London.
Something about the idea of animal fame
stuck with me. Fame -- where a group of humans abruptly acquires a particular
interest in an individual -- is the most ridiculous of social phenomena. The people
shriek when they see the famous person, follow their every move, give them
money relentless. And the famous person develops various complexes, loses their
freedom, becomes enormously rich, and ends up on a daytime TV show. Bizarre.
But the concept (like a lot of concepts in fairness), just cannot gain traction
on an animal. Animals are a-celebrity. The grip of fame on an animal is like a wet
bar of soap in the shower or that coating you can put on your windscreen that
makes rain just fly off. Animal celebrity is a void, a mirror, a human
absurdity.
The world’s most famous cat is probably
Grumpy Cat, that cat that looks sad all the time. Thanks to an extensive
merchandising effort on the part of her owner, Grumpy Cat has a net worth of
around $1 million apparently – more evidence that money can’t buy you happiness.
She was the internet’s hottest property in 2013.
But what of the cat psyche at the centre of
it all? Even humans struggle to deal with Resting Bitch Face. THAT’S JUST MY FACE, MORON!!! they yell.
How would Grumpy Cat respond to the parade of people delighting at its
miserable expression? I HAVE A CONDITION OKAY?? FELINE DWARFISM BITCH? U HEARD
OF IT?? AT LEAST MY UNDERBITE MADE ME
RICH. But of course, Grumpy Cat probably has a minimal sense of self, little
idea of what it looks like, even less how it compares to other cats, and
absolutely no conception of how humans respond to its mutation. The cat is
essentially absent from the whole thing, the grumpy-looking black hole at the
centre of a minor commercial cosmos. But unlike Snowy, Grumpy Cat is still
famous and her fame will endure even beyond her eventual death.
Another famous cat I’m fond of is Famous Fred. Famous Fred is a fictional cat from one of my favourite books as a kid.
His was a different dimension of fame. During the day he was an ordinary lazy
housecat, but at night, after he was let out to do his business, he moonlighted
as an Elvis-like hip-swinging, panty-dropping crooner cat. From amateurish
beginnings, his talent blossomed, his fame escalated, and he left England on a
world tour, selling out stadia and concert halls across the globe. But the fast
living eventually caught up with him. His waistline grew as fast as his fame
and not long after he died.
Famous Fred taps into the idea that our
pets must have more complicated lives than the simple existence we provide
them. We project these fantasies on what are, sentimentality aside, dumb creatures
driven by a few primal instincts. Maybe that explains why Snowy has such a
large twitter following and why Snowy’s ghost writer sometimes writes about his
own life as Snowy. Fantasies about the hidden lives of less intelligent
creatures and inanimate objects is a well-established genre – think of Toy
Story, The Indian in the Cupboard, literally any film with animals in it.
An interesting aspect of Famous Fred is
that Fred’s secret life seems to be real within the context of the story. Fred’s
human owners* actually meet the sentient cats at Fred’s funeral (“He’s got a digital watch!”) and Fred’s
hidden life has real-world consequences (his death). It seems to relish the
idea that our pets could have second lives. Compare it to Toy Story, which
keeps its cards closer to its chest. By making sure Andy never becomes aware that
his toys are alive it preserves the possibility that the whole thing is pure
fantasy. Indeed, Andy’s obliviousness is the source of much of the film’s
pathos. Maybe Snowy is a closer analog to Andy than Woody, completely unaware of
the adoration flung his way.
All this is swirling in my head when I
think about Snowy in Croydon. And even though I know intellectually that he has
zero understanding of the social dimensions of his move, deeper down I don’t
believe it. I can’t truly shake the feeling that Snowy was aware of his celebrity.
And that’s because, well—
All cats think they’re celebrities.
(and all dogs think you’re one.)
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| Goodbye Sweet Prince |
* It's only the children of Fred's owners that meet Fred and the other cats, the adults stay oblivious. This plays into another trope where children have the ability to see worlds that adults can't.
