by Teresita Pumará
I tell him that I’m hurting too, ever since I started talking.
Joann Sfar, The Rabbi’s Cat
one
Some time ago I invited to my
house a friend who loves cats. Let’s call this friend F. and let’s refer to F.
as “he” because, as my German teacher says, “masculine always stronger is”. F.
does not have a cat in the moment, although he did as a child. So, when F. got
home, he was happy and excited to meet my cat. Let’s call my cat Mishkin,
because that is the name we gave him. F.’s anxiety was so intense, that he was
all over Mishkin. He caressed him roughly, he poked him to force him to play
with his hand, he chased him around the house and he did not coward when
Mishkin showed him his ferocious teeth -Mishkin is a big cat who used to hunt
weasels. I must say that Mishkin behaved like a civilized gentleman. He put up
with F. with patience and despise. He is the hero in this story. I am the
coward. I was always polite to F. and tried unsuccessfully to moderate his
anxiety with warnings and fake concern about his safety. I felt pulled between
my love and distress for my cat and my wish not to make my guest feel
uncomfortable. When F. finally went home, I felt ashamed and sad. I had wronged
Mishkin and failed his trust.
two
I am
probably exaggerating. I am a cat person. But feeling pulled between human
customs and the wellbeing of a cat left me wondering. Why did F. felt he could
disturb Mishkin without minding his own disposition to play or to be caressed?
F. obviously felt the cat was at his disposal. Some men feel that way about
women. Although F. loves cats, he did not think a cat’s wishes and humour
should be respected, and he ignored the signs of annoyance Mishkin repeatedly
sent him.
I, on the contrary, have an almost religious respect for cats. I feel
honoured when a cat likes me and seeks my hand to be petted. In fact, we do not
say Mishkin is our pet, but that we are his humans. I must say, nevertheless,
this pagan feeling of mine does not extend to all living things. I like
plugging green leaves off trees and break them into a million pieces. I enjoy
watching spiders eat their preys. I hate pigeons. Plants always die in my
hands. But after sharing five years with a cat I slowly came to understand
non-human beings live in a world of their own, a world radically different from
ours but superposed to ours.
In the afternoons, I often take Mishkin out to the building’s courtyard
so that he takes some fresh air and watches birds flying over his head. I take
a book with me, but it is always more fun to watch Mishkin lift his head and
sniff as if the wind brought some far away message, and then lie down
majestically in his Tischbein’s Goethe position, “All is well in my kingdom”. No
matter how used I am to the cat and his ways, I always go through the childlike
philosophical experience of wonder. Mishkin presents me the mysterious in the
familiar. Nature has a life of its own, he shows me, a way unknown to us, the
all-knowers. We are not indispensable to nature.
three
When I was
in the university I assisted to a couple of meetings of a reading group
dedicated to French post-war gloomy philosophers. In one of the meetings I went
to we discussed a Blanchot text where Blanchot claimed that a human being (most
probably a Dasein) could only
approach death and experience his finitude when faced with the death of the
Other, the death of the fellow… Dasein. I remember everyone talking about the
Otherness and the great Abyss and I feeling intimidated and never finding anything
clever to say, because I was not sure what where we actually talking about. I
also recall I was left thinking about the deaths I had faced and how they left
me dumb, as if I was suddenly turned into stone or other inanimate material.
The death of the other did not make me feel more human, if anything it made me
feel less human and revealed me how much earth, fire, water and air we are.
Maybe when faced to death we become aware of the thread we walk on. But only
when spying life can we perceive its fragility and power, its self-sufficient
virtuality.
four
In Ursula Le
Guin’s Tales of Earthsea magicians
exert their power by using the ancient language, which holds the true names of
entities. Dragons, ancient, highly intelligent creatures, speak this language,
and so by using the true speech magicians can communicate with them. Le Guin’s
dragons usually have towards humans the attitude of a Nietzschean god: cruel
and condescending, but generous. Something like Mishkin with F., Dragons in Le
Guin’s book evoke for me ancient wisdom belonging to non-human beings. They are
the perfect stoics. Some twentieth century philosophies taught us that through
the awareness of death we become human, and that is what separates us from
animals, not reason. I still believe that to be true. But I do not believe in
the hierarchy it presupposes. This s because, when I gaze at my cat I feel he
learned the lesson, embraced it and jumped to the other side while I stand
petrified by death with my eyes fixed in the deepness of the abyss. An abyss I
fill with words.