The Cat that Lost Everything

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.

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.)

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.