THE BOOK OF CATTITUDE
Dictators of the Fur
I. Cattitude Defined
Cats have been able to create a master–servant relationship with humans, where so many other animals have failed. How have cats managed to persuade humans to willingly and gratefully do all of the care and feeding, all of the adoring, all of the spending, all of the litter box maintenance, and all of the work?
Cattitude.
Cats exude an attitude that commands servitude and adulation. Cattitude encapsulates all of the traits we worship in royalty, movie stars, rock stars, and professional athletes all rolled into one. And since we humans have proven ourselves powerless under the spell of celebrity even when it is on a TV set, a magazine page, or an iPad, what chance do we stand against a real live celebrity boldly licking its crotch in the middle of our living room?
When a cat walks into a room, a red carpet spontaneously unrolls at its feet, a spotlight follows it across the floor, and paparazzi appear to snap photos while a saxophone solo plays in the background. Okay, maybe not in reality, but in the mind of the Catakist, it’s purr-fectly paws-ible.
Cats are so confident in their worship-worthiness, they literally put themselves on a pedestal. They will automatically sit on the highest horizontal surface in the room, even if it’s just a paperback book lying on a table, so that the lesser species in the room can more easily pay homage.
Just try not to worship a cat. Dare you. It isn’t easy.
Cattitude is why.
Cattitude is an exquisite blend of:
Superiority—A cat never exhibits the slightest doubt as to where it stands in relation to every other living thing on the planet. If a cat’s coat were detachable, it would toss it to you without looking at you each time it walked into the room. And you would gratefully take it.
Coolness—Cats are James Dean (dogs are Tom Hanks). Cats are blues and jazz (dogs are country and classic rock). Cats prowl the midnight hour (dogs chase a ball at three in the afternoon). Cats purr (dogs lick your face). Everything cats do is cool. That’s why the expression “cool cat” exists and the expression “cool wombat” does not. Want to create the world’s coolest cartoon dude for the front of a Cheetos bag? Better make him a cat. What’s cooler than a cat wearing sunglasses?
Sleekness—The design of a cat is all elegant lines. The movement of a cat is slinky. The sound of a cat is silence. And you know that thing high fashion models walk on? There’s a reason it’s called a catwalk, not a hippo-stomp, a kangaroo-hop, or a warthog-lumber. Humans long to be as sleek and graceful as cats.
Aloofness—Call them detached, call them reserved, call them snobbish, call them haughty, but one thing’s for certain: cats don’t give a litter box Lincoln Log what the mortals in the room think about them. That’s cattitude.
Confidence—A cat can manage to look casual and self-assured while strolling along a tightwire over the Grand Canyon. A cat will fling itself into space, do a somersault in the air, land on a surface the size of a dime, and look at you like, “What?!” Most of all, a cat will assume you want to love it whenever it deigns to bestow a crumb of attention on you. Why? Confidence.
Mystery—A dog wears its heart on its face; a cat keeps its heart in a little leather carrying case stashed in its fur. It will let you know what it is thinking and feeling if and when it is good and ready to do so. Meanwhile, you will receive your orders on a need-to-know basis. And you happily accept this role.
Smarts—Scientists claim that only humans are capable of abstract thought and planning. Scientists, evidently, have not watched a cat turn a doorknob with its paws, figure out your plans to give it medicine before you’ve even lifted your butt off the couch, or map out a strategy for jumping to the place where the human has stored the cream.
Unpredictability—This is perhaps the most distinctive element of Cattitude. A cat can change from superior to silly, cool to cuddly, mysterious to mushy at the drop of a ball of yarn, and will soften the defenses of even the most hardened DICK (um, maybe we ought to rephrase that).
The point is, Cattitude is totally under the cat’s control. Cats turn it on and off as needed in order to more skillfully bend humans to their will. The unwitting two-leggeds do their part by not requiring a whole lot of skill in order to be bent. In fact, Catakists want to be put under the spell of Cat.
That’s the fascinating thing about cat worshipers: they choose to be put in a submissive position to Cat. There is no law requiring people to have cats. No, people go out and proactively acquire felines, shelling out top dollar to do so, knowing full well that they are entering a lifelong subservient relationship.
Why? They are under the spell of cattitude.
II. Cattitude in Action
Virtually everything a cat does—from the way it sits in front of your computer monitor staring at you for no apparent reason to the way it converts the highest piece of furniture in every room into Pride Rock to the way it lifts its ears in a little V of disdain whenever you create so much as a decibel of sound in its general vicinity—drips with Cattitude. Here are a few practices that truly embody and exemplify Cattitude:
“That was intentional.” Cats pioneered the concept of “I meant to do that,” which humans immediately seized upon and have tried to emulate ever since. A cat never makes a mistake. When Cat miscalculates the propulsion and trajectory necessary to successfully land its jump on the intended target, or mistakes its own tail for a small mammal, it simply looks at you as if to say, “Excellent. That confirms my hypothesis that that action is pointless.”
“I say which water I drink.” Few cats in recorded history have sipped water from a dish a human has offered. Rather, it will drink from the dripping faucet, the “throne,” the decorative fountain, the fish tank, and most often from the drinking cup the human has just set down on her desk.
“Hands where I can see them and step away from the chow.” Cat will literally bite the hand that feeds it. The instant you set food down for a cat, it gives you the stink eye, like a leopard at the watering hole seeing you as its jungle competition.
“Which is more important, me or a stupid piece of paper?” Cats, as everyone knows, don’t come when called. That’s for dogs. The only known way to get a cat to “come” and “sit” is focus your attention on any type of paperwork: pay some bills or start reading a book, magazine, or newspaper. The cat will instantly materialize out of nowhere and insert itself between you and the object of your attention, as if to say, “I’m what you really want to look at.”
“Just passing through.” Cats will repeatedly walk past humans going in the same direction, without ever going back the other way. They will do this until the human takes notice. The purpose of this behavior? To short-circuit your mind. Why? Because Cat can.
III. Cattitude Sells
The greatest proof of how effective Cattitude is at bending the human will is the use of cats in branding. Humans put their bucks where their beliefs are, and humans clearly believe in Cat. If advertisers want a product to be seen as cool, sexy, powerful, dominant, confident, athletic, or sleek, it pairs the product with a cat. If they want the product to be seen as cute, cuddly, warm, or fuzzy, the product is paired with a kitten. Perhaps that’s why the images of cats, large and small, are used to sell everything from movie studios to Japanese junk food, from breakfast cereal to running shoes, and from fireworks to cheese curls.
In short, every single thing a person could want.
Cattitude in the Stadium
One industry in particular has made a killing from Cattitude: professional sports. MLB has the Tigers, the NHL has the Panthers. And without being able to rely on cat names—such as lions, jaguars, panthers, and bengals—the NFL would have gone bankrupt two decades ago, having been forced to settle for team names like: The Detroit Deer, The Jacksonville Jellyfish, or The Cincinnati Chipmunks.
Collegiate sports are even more cat-crazy. Looking only at four-year colleges with Division I teams, there are no fewer than forty-six teams called the Tigers, thirty-three named the Panthers, twenty-seven called the Cougars, thirty-two teams named the lions, and twenty-seven teams named the Wildcats. Cat mascots impart toughness, agility, and speed to athletes. With a cat name, your team exudes cattitude!
Cattitude on the Road
The industry that has truly made Cattitude its bread and butter is the auto industry. Carmakers want their products to be associated with all the attributes of Cattitude: pride, sexiness, power, confidence. Cars pine to be feline. In fact, they should just apply for recognition by the CFA (Cat Fanciers Association) as an official breed of cat and get it over with.
Not only can you put a tiger in your tank and a purr in your engine, but you can proudly drive a car with the name of virtually any cat you choose.
Just a sampling of those that have been offered:
Jaguar
Mercury Cougar
Lamborghini Cheetah
Buick Wildcat
Sunbeam Tiger
Mercury Lynx
Dodge Challenger Hellcat
Ford Puma
Mercury Bobcat
Geely Beauty Leopard (China)
MDI Mini-Cat (France)
Isuzu Leopard (China)
Reliant Kitten
IV. At Their Beck and Claw: Our Attitude Toward Cattitude
Cattitude has had its influence on every aspect of human culture. Cats hypnotize us into viewing them in a positive light, despite the fact that they provide us no services and treat us with thinly disguised (or maybe not disguised at all) disdain much of the time. For some reason, we seem to like it when cats do this. Dogs, on the other hand, work their furry butts off for us as service dogs, guardians, and rescuers, then greet us at the end of the day with bright eyes, wet kisses, and wagging tails. Yet dogs are often punished for many behaviors we accept as normal for cats: biting, scratching, destroying things, making noise.
The way we elevate cats and, um, throw dogs to the hounds is even reflected in our language. Notice how most dog-related expressions have a negative connotation …
in the doghouse
gone to the dogs
dogging it
the dog days
sick as a dog
dirty dog
lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas
meaner than a junkyard dog
… while cat-related expressions are quite complimentary and positive, or at least reflect Cat’s superiority over humans …
the cat’s meow
purring like a kitten
the cat’s pajamas
cool cat
catnap
the cat’s whiskers
fat cat
let sleeping cats lie
sitting in the catbird seat
to bell a cat
The most telling example is when we use the word dog or cat itself to describe a human.
A dog is an ugly word for someone who may not necessarily fit into society’s definition of beautiful. (People who use the word dog to describe a human are pigs and jackasses, two other animals used to describe someone in a derogatory manner, when the animals themselves are well above the actions perpetrated by those we call by those names.)
A cat is a cool word for a cool person. To call someone a cat is to acknowledge their basic chillness and sense of style. A human cat is urban, sophisticated, hip, musical. A human cat wears shades. A human cat plays sax, guitar, or bass. A human cat does not wear high-waisted Bermuda shorts and eat at Golden Corral.
V. Surrender to Purr-fection: The Sacred Attributes of Cat
Cattitude, in the common use of the word, refers to the cold shoulder that cats give the rest of the animal kingdom, including Man, based on Cat’s natural superiority and entitlement. But in the world of Catakism, the word has broader applications. It refers to all the unique traits that cats possess, not just their most condescending ones.
Cat boasts many mystical qualities that render her objectively superior to Man on a spiritual, physical, and mental level. Though DICKs deny many of these feline qualities, Catakists celebrate and honor them.
These traits are known in the catma of Catakism as the Nine Sacred Attributes of Cat.
The Nine Sacred Attributes
1. Cats can teleport. Cats possess the ability to dematerialize and reappear within locked cabinets, under platform beds with no entry points, and from behind closed doors. More baffling than the question of how cats teleport is the question of why. For Cat never teleports to a place that serves its purposes. One would think that given her abilities, Cat would beam herself to the middle of a bird cage or inside the fridge, where the tuna casserole resides, but no. The cat teleports itself to places such as the inside of your grandfather’s ventriloquist trunk, which hasn’t been opened since Grandpa shuffled off to that great America’s Got Talent audition in the sky, and then yowls at you as if you were personally responsible for placing her there.
Why do cats do this? Presumably to advance their ultimate mission on Earth: to destroy human reason and replace it with sound effects from old Tom and Jerry cartoons.
2. Cats are Zen masters. Cats are so chill, so Zen, so Eckhart Tolle, they make a sloth look like a drive-time DJ on a Red Bull jag. Cats are so adept at living in the present moment—just witness a cat watching a mouse hole—that time literally does not exist for them, until a human comes plodding along hitting a spoon on a dish and shouting, “Time for din-din, Tiddlywinks!”
Cats are so Zen that they literally subtract stress from humans. A cat can lower human blood pressure just by lying on the human’s lap (fact).
3. Cats commune with the spirit world. Cats have a tough job to do. Not only do they need to give us the cold shoulder 24/7, but they also need to give the cold shoulder to the vast array of ghosts and disembodied spirits they can see but we can’t. There is no doubt that cats can see ghosts—their eyes often focus on the exact spot in space where a nonbeing is passing by.
The ability to see ghosts also explains why every now and then, without warning, a cat leaps up into the air as if someone had just tried to give it an uninvited rectal exam and runs out of the room screeching.
4. Cats are ninjas. Cat possesses a fine-tuned athletic ability that surpasses that of an Olympic gymnast and ballet dancer combined. Try this experiment. Gently slide your hands under a sleeping cat. Now, with no warning whatsoever, and all the stealth you can muster, toss that sleeping cat into the air—definitely a DICK move. Watch as the cat quickly goes through the following progression:
1. awaken
2. analyze the current in-flight situation
3. realease a nails-on-the-blackboard screech
4. wheel about in the air to hiss at you
5. arch her back and do a backflip in midair
6. hit the ground, sticking the landing with all four paws
7. return to her previous location
8. lick herself
9. go back to sleep
What if a human—say, you—faced a similar scenario. Imagine someone placing your sleeping body in a catapult and pulling the lever. If you are like most two-leggeds, you will go through the following progression:
1. whiz through air
2. strike wall surface
3. get fitted for full-body cast
5. Cats are psychic. Everyone who lives with a cat knows that felines are psychic. Unfortunately, cats expend 98 percent of their psychic powers not on solving crimes, warning humanity about upcoming disasters, finding lost children, or helping their humans win lotteries, but on jumping onto their human’s lap the instant they decide to go to the toilet. Without fail, the moment a cat owner has the idea, “Think I’ll pee before my bladder explodes,” a cat comes hurtling in from out of nowhere, curls up on her lap, and instantly goes to sleep. Why? No one knows. Perhaps to remind the human how futile his personal agendas are.
The other area where Cat’s psychic powers become evident is around veterinary appointments. Cat unerringly knows when vet appointments are scheduled, even if the human says nothing about it. Approximately nine minutes before departure time, Cat will exercise yet another of its sacred attributes … read on.
6. Cats can disappear. Cats vanish into thin air in advance of the following events: veterinary appointments, groomer appointments, the administration of medicine, claw trimming time, and the arrival of your cousins from Duluth with the adorable toddlers.
Cats can also reappear, seemingly from out of nowhere.
7. Cats can implement the Feline Mind Meld. Every cat is capable of putting human beings under its spell through use of the Feline Mind Meld. The cat simply stares into the human’s eyes for fifteen seconds, with occasional slow blinks, and the human becomes incapable of any behavior that does not serve the cat. This state of hypnosis can be so extreme that victims have been found wandering the aisles of the nearest Purr-Babies-R-Us, holding twenty-pound bags of freeze-dried chicken breast treats, with no idea how they got there. Clear case of falling prey to the Feline Mind Meld.
8. Cats can liquefy. Cats possess the astonishing ability to instantly transform from vertebrate to invertebrate. They can dissolve their skeletons at will and turn into a warm puddle of purring fur under two conditions: (1) the stroking and patting of a skilled human hand, or (2) the desire to pass through an opening way too small for their bodies, such as the quarter-inch space between the bottom of the door and the floor, thus explaining their ability to appear virtually anywhere.
9. Cats have nine lives. Perhaps the best known of the sacred attributes is Cat’s fine-tuned ability to reincarnate. Humans are in such awe of this feline ability that they decided to mimic it with the invention of multiple lives in video games, which led to the growth of the worldwide video game industry, which led to an increase in video game programmers and designers, which led to the establishment of Cat as the number one pet on the planet. Why? Because all individuals working in any aspect of the software industry are required by law to possess a cat.
VI. Purr-sonality
Cattitude reveals itself in all felines, from the hairless Sphinx kitten with the kite-sized ears to the mighty lion. Whereas there is virtually no similarity between, say, a hummingbird and an ostrich, even though both are birds, every member of the feline family exudes cat in everything it does.
Yet under the umbrella of Cattitude, kitties can have remarkably varied purr-sonalities. Catakists throughout the ages have cat-alogued a number of distinct purr-sonalities amongst the felines that have graced their homes. Each purr-sonality is deemed worthy of worship in its own right.
The Shadow—This cat chooses a single human to Velcro itself to night and day. When the human cooks a meal, the cat “helps.” When the human sleeps, the cat curls up on its pillow. All day, every day, the cat does every single thing the human does, and yet the cat manages to make it appear that every decision was his idea and that your schedules just happen to overlap by coincidence. All Catakists secretly crave a Shadow cat.
The Talker—This kitty carries on a nonstop commentary about everything that’s going on in his life, from his backyard hunting prospects to the local mating scene. From the continually plaintive yowling sound in the Talker’s voice, one can assume that things aren’t going too great in kitty world, but one doesn’t have to assume. Just ask him—he’ll be happy to explain.
The Freakazoid—This kitty is never quite at home in our humdrum plane of existence and spends her days interacting with aliens from another dimension. Her eyes are always wide open, her head constantly darting from place to place as she stalks and jumps on invisible (to us) aliens, fiercely tackling them and cute-ing them into submission.
The Sun God—Unlike the average cat, which spends 17.5 hours a day napping, the Sun God spends most of it asleep in the beam of sunlight coming in the living room window. As the beam travels across the room with the moving sun, he remains within the beam, yet you never actually see him move. Beam me up, Scottish Fold!
The Total Cuddle Muffin—This rare creature, highly welcomed by Catakists, spends her entire life span in a single environment: the human lap. When not napping, she is purring and/or receiving chin rubs, cheek rubs, head rubs, and belly rubs, while the human expresses gratitude for the opportunity to be of service.
The Drill Sergeant—This kitty is the self-appointed keeper of order in the human household. She keeps track of the humans’ schedules with a stern eye and ensures that everyone is on task by issuing a lethal glare to all who stray from the path. If there are dogs in the household, the Drill Sergeant keeps a vigilant eye on them with a slightly raised paw, ready to whack them into order whenever they do anything, well, dog-like. All dogs recognize the Drill Sergeant as the alpha in the house. As do all humans.
The Great White (and Black) Hunter—On the plus side, this kitty actually earns her keep. On the negative side, she does so by patrolling your house and yard, rooting out creatures that you would prefer not to know even existed, such as rats, mice, snakes, moles, voles, millipedes, and the occasional scorpion. At the end of the day, the hunter dutifully turns in her pelts and skins—with a little bit of fresh pancreas attached—and awaits her reward from you.
Jacques Pussteau—This kitty explorer spends his life uncovering the mysteries of science, from the properties of spilled water to the way various objects respond to the Law of Gravity. They say curiosity killed the cat, but any human who shares its home with Jacques Pussteau knows that curiosity may kill the cat owner.
The A-hole—There’s no nice way to say it: some kitties are just tiny feline a-holes: grumpy, surly, aggressive, unpleasant, and rude. The Catakist fortunate enough to land an A-hole for a “pet” gets to groom, feed, stroke, spoil, praise, and pander to his cat 24/7 and in return is scratched, swatted, bitten, hissed at, and haughtily ignored. Yet the true Catakist feels honored by her cat’s presence.
It’s impossible to know what purr-sonality your adult cat is going to end up with, because kittens have yet to fully develop their purr-sonality and are all considered freakin’ adorable. But one thing is for certain: your cat will be sure to have the one purr-sonality you feel least equipped to deal with. This is Cat’s way of helping humans grow, adapt, and evolve to their highest potential.
Ninefold Path Guidepost #4
When encountering a feline exuding cattitude, bow down and become its servant for life … and be damn happy to do so.
Human beings the world over proclaim freedom and self-determination to be the highest of human values. Then they go out and get a cat. A human who lives with a cat immediately enters a relationship of indentured servitude. His entire life revolves around making his cat master comfortable and happy, while deferring fulfillment of his own needs.
