Cat Videos and #MeToo

“We use the nature we find, then make up the rest,” goes a line by Alexis Madrigal, my favorite sentence in an anthology of writing about cat videos, Cat is Art Spelled Wrong. Actually, I would add, using nature and making it up often amount to the same thing.

Nature is largely alien to us, yet we are continuous with it. Calling nature an “it” evidences the overarching trouble; though we are animals (albeit highly articulate ones), we tend to see every other life form on the planet as an “it” rather than a “thou”—something to use, reinvent, or both.

That includes other humans, of course, but first let’s talk about cats.

Mother cats move their kittens around by biting them on the scruff of the neck, which signals the youngsters to freeze in compliance until set down in whatever location mother has decided is favorable. To stay safe, the kitten reflexively