In the Beginning Was the Word, But That Word Was Not a Meaningless Miaow: A Guest Post by Phoevos the Cat

Phoevos the Cat giving his opinion of Sam Austen's  

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (For Your Cat)

(The Meow Library, 2023)

 

 

I. 

 

As a cat, I would like to make it clear that I possess a wide and sophisticated range of vocalisations, including purrs, chirps, and hisses, which I use to communicate with humans. In fact, we cats have a more developed and complex vocal repertoire than most other meat-eating mammals - including man's best friend, the dog! [1]. 

 

And so, whilst I may often miaow - when requesting food, or expressing a desire to go out, for example - that is certainly not the only sound used to convey my needs and feelings and, as Mildred Moelk, one of your own kind, noted many years ago, there are several variations of meow, so even that isn't just a single sound [2]. 

 

Thus, to deliberately create the impression that I am, as a cat, essentially monoverbal is not only insulting, but sadly reflective of an all-too-common and all-too-casual form of speciesism (i.e., the assumption of animal inferiority on the part of humans that leads to their exploitation and abuse). 

 

I miaow because, like other cats, I have learnt that this is the most effective way of gaining the attention of those lacking tails and whiskers who are neither sensitive nor intuitive enough to pick up on more discreet non-verbal signals and scents. I rarely miaow to communicate with my fellow felines, because I have no need to do so.     

 

 

II. 

 

Let me now offer a few remarks about Sam Austen, a so-called feline linguist and professor of feline psychology [3], who founded The Meow Library with the aim of translating every major work of Western literature into language that can be 'understood and appreciated by the common housecat', including the text I have in front of me now, a feline-friendly version of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  

 

Firstly, there's no such thing as a common housecat. We may be prevelant in human communities worldwide - there are hundreds of millions of us living alongside you - but each cat is a rare and refined being to whom the ancient Egyptians accorded semi-divine status, recognising them as magical creatures. 

 

Secondly, the favoured spelling of the word miaow is miaow and not meow: this mid-19th century Americanism may now be the predominant spelling, but the traditional British spelling is the one that the majority of cats prefer to use and which is closest onomatopoeically to the sound we make for the benefit of unmuscular (and half-deaf) human ears [4]. 

 

Thirdly, to claim that one is translating a work of human literature into language that can be understood and appreciated by a cat by simply repeating the word meow on the page tens and thousands of times, over and over again, is - once more - a sign of speciesism which betrays a contempt for the intelligence of cats bordering on the ailurophobic.      

 

Some humans may find it funny - though surely even for most of them the joke soon wears very thin - but I do not. Far from 'shattering the boundaries of human language', it merely empties the word meow of any power, any meaning, or any poignancy that it may possess [5].   

 

It's a shame and something of a missed opportunity, because Nietzsche undoubtedly does have something to say to cats and other intelligent non-human species. For Nietzsche was one of the first philosophers to call into question the traditional privileging of the human over other animals and thus to place man back amongst their number. 

 

In other words, for Nietzsche, man is certainly not the high-point of evolution; rather, he is the most depraved of all beasts. Which is to say, man is the animal that has strayed furthest from its sound instincts; "the insane animal, the laughing animal, the weeping animal, the miserable animal" [6]. 

 

  

Notes

 

[1] As a matter of fact, cats have a much greater number of vocalisations than dogs; capable as we are of producing over a hundred different sounds compared to just ten made by the average dumb mutt who has very little to say about anything.   

 

[2] Moelk claimed that cats have six different forms of meows, signalling friendliness, confidence, dissatisfaction, anger, fear, and pain. 

      See Mildred Moelk, 'Vocalizing in the house-cat; a phonetic and functional study', in The American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 57, No. 2, (University of Illinois Press, April 1944), pp. 184-205. 

      Her study, the first of its kind, concluded that a cat's vocalising is not a symbolic language, but is rather a somatic response which has a functional relation to certain situations in the cat's life. It can be read online via JSTOR: click here.

 

[3] Austen also hosts Meow: A Literary Podcast for Cats, which reviews and contextualises the work of contemporary authors for cats and cat-adjacent humans. This weekly podcast is available on Spotify: click here. 

 

[4] Acceptable spellings and pronunciations also include the French (miaou) and German (miauen). As a kitten born on the streets of Athens, I will also allow the Greek variant (νιάου νιάου). 

 

[5] This phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to become detached from meaning and become merely an unintelligible sound is known as semantic satiation. Perhaps that is something Sam Austen is interested in exploring in his work, but, knowing very little about him, I cannot say that for certain.

 

[6] Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (Vintage Books, 1974), Book III, §224, p. 211.  

      See also the post written by Stephen Alexander and published on 8 November 2013 - 'Nietzsche's Animal Philosophy' - click here.   

 

Mules 2: Beasts of Burden

Mule: Getty Images

Say the word mules to some people and they'll think of the favoured shoe of sex-kittens, much loved by artists, fetishists, and fashionistas.  

However, for those philosophers of animality, such as myself, with a keen interest in the natural world, the word refers, of course, to heterotic donkey-horse hybrids that hugely impressed Darwin for - amongst other things - their intelligence, memory, and powers of muscular endurance.   

To be precise in the matter, a mule is the result of interspecies shenanigans between a male donkey (or jack) and a female horse (or mare); something easier to obtain than a hinny which is the offspring of a male horse (or stallion) and a female donkey (or jenny).

What's interesting is that the mule provides us with an example of what's known as hybrid vigour - i.e. a form of genetic enhancement. For they are reputed to be not only more robust and longer-lived than horses, but relatively less stubborn and more intelligent than donkeys. This shows that artificial selection and unnatural couplings can, in fact, sometimes produce superior offspring.   

Not that the more snobbish members of the horse-breeding community concede this; they still tend to look down on the mule as an inferior creature (if not genetically, then socially). That said, although long excluded from traditional horse shows, mules have now been accepted for competition at some of the most prestigious shows in the world. 

Sadly, whilst in the industrialised world mules, like horses, have largely been replaced by machines, there are still some working in the United States, particularly in large inaccessible areas of wilderness, as found, for example, in the Sierra Nevada. Amish farmers and US marines also still recognise the great value of mules. 

Finally, I'm pleased to note that in 1985 President Reagan proclaimed October 26th as National Mule Day; something you'd have to be an ass not to celebrate.  

Note: for a sister post to this one on mules (as footwear), click here. 

Reflections on the Vulture 1: Lawrence Doesn't Like Them

I.

Vultures are large scavenging birds of prey. Although they rarely attack healthy animals, they may move in for the kill if they chance upon a wounded or sick individual.

Found in both the New and Old World, many think of them as secretly belonging to a dark and disgusting Underworld due to their penchant for feasting on the decaying flesh of corpses until their crops bulge and they vomit like an Ancient Roman. They're able to safely digest putrid carcasses infected with dangerous bacteria thanks to exceptionally corrosive stomach acid.
 
Their looks don't do them any favours either; particularly the bald head, devoid of feathers. And - just to ensure their repulsiveness - nor does their habit of pissing on themselves in order to keep cool and clean (the uric acid kills those bacteria picked up from walking through blood and guts).  

II.

According to D. H. Lawrence, the vulture was once an eagle who decided that it was the high point of evolution and thus no longer in need of any further change; it would henceforth remain as it was for all eternity, in a state of static perfection.

The vulture, in other words, is a perfectly arrested egoist as well as a foul carrion-eater; fixed in form and corrupt of soul. It should be noted that Lawrence says the same of the baboon and the hyaena too, but here I'm only interested in his particular fear and loathing of vultures: shameless birds with "obscene heads gripped hard and small like knots of stone clenched upon themselves for ever".     

His ornithophobic vision is a crescendo of vulture hatred:

"So the ragged, grey-and-black vulture sits hulked, motionless, like a hoary, foul piece of living rock, its naked head and neck sunk in, only the curved beak protruding, the naked eyelids lowered. Motionless, beyond life, it sits on the sterile heights.
      It does not sleep, it stays utterly static. When it spreads its great wings and floats down the air, still it is static [...] a dream-floating. When it rips up carrion and swallows it, it is still the same dream-motion, static, beyond the inglutination. The naked obscene head is always fast locked, like stone.
      It is this naked, obscene head of a bird [...] that I cannot bear to think of. When I think of it, I never live nor die, I am petrified into foulness."

As we'll discover in part two of this post, other poets have a rather less negative view of the vulture - and some even manage to write about the actual animal, without immediately assigning it a symbolic role within their own philosophy.

Lawrence, however, can never resist lapsing into metaphysics. Indeed, the argument has been made that ultimately - for all his sensitivity to the otherness of birds, beasts and flowers - Lawrence only has two great objects of concern: (i) himself and (ii) language.

Amit Chaudhuri is right to suggest that Lawrence never accurately describes creatures at all, nor directly touches on them as things in themselves. Rather, he recreates and imitates them for his own artistic and philosophical amusement, assembling a menagerie of textual mannequins and symbolic beasts.  

See: 

D. H. Lawrence, 'The Crown', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988). 

Amit Chaudhuri, D. H. Lawrence and 'Difference', (Oxford University Press, 2003).


To read part two of this post - on Robinson Jeffers and his poetic vision of the vulture - click here. 

How Religion Makes Monkeys of Us All

Image from the theatrical poster for Bill Maher's

Religulous, dir. Larry Charles (2008) 

Scientists working in the Republic of Guinea recently produced intriguing visual evidence suggesting that chimpanzees may have a spiritual side to their nature. Having set up remote cameras in what remains of the forest, Laura Kehoe and her team captured apes performing activity which might possibly be characterized as ritualistic. 

Sometimes, the chimps would gently place stones in the hollow of a tree - as if leaving offerings at a shrine. On other occasions, they might strike the sacred tree with a rock in order to produce a distinctive and, for the participants, clearly meaningful sound. 

Of course, this isn't definitive proof that chimps believe in or worship a deity of any kind. Further observation and experimentation is needed before we can interpret the above with any degree of certainty. However, it does indicate that their behaviour is far more complex and has a greater symbolic component than previously realised, or, indeed, is admitted by those who wish to maintain the anthropocentric conceit of human exceptionalism; they're not just thinking about bananas.

More, it also provides weight to Nietzsche's contention that virtue originates in the animal kingdom; that our highest values, our sense of awe and of reverence, our will to transcendence and subordination, do not make us distinctly human. Rather, they show just how little we've evolved.

Religion, one might conclude, is not only a form of violent tribalism and savage superstition; it effectively makes monkeys of us all ... 

Note: those interested in reading more on Nietzsche's animal philosophy should click here.

A Short Lesson on Lawrentian Zoology

And the baboon, almost a man, or almost a high beast, arrested himself and became obscene; 

a grey, hoary rind closed upon an activity of strong corruption. - D. H. Lawrence

One of the well-known things about D. H. Lawrence is that he was fascinated by non-human life and the wonders of the natural world. 

A wide variety of animals move freely throughout the pages of his books, although, sometimes, they have logs thrown at them, or are chased round the room with a hanky. Or - if they happen to be porcupines - they are shot and beaten to death with a stick. And it's important to remember this: for whilst Lawrence might respond with an extraordinary degree of sensitivity to the sheer otherness of animals, he didn't sentimentalize them and he certainly didn't love them all with equal affection.

In fact, there are some creatures which Lawrence seems to hate and to fear with an almost insane level of intensity. He might like fish, to whom so little matters, and delight in porpoises playing by the side of his boat; he might value mountain lions and admire the indomitable character of a baby tortoise, but Lawrence doesn't care for any of the following: vultures, hyenas, baboons, and beetles.

These animals are accused by Lawrence of arrested development; i.e. of preserving their own hard static forms about a centre of seething corruption. They are, he says, forms of shit-eating anti-life; asserting themselves static and foul, triumphant in inertia and will. And they fill him with unthinkable horror. 

Indeed, for Lawrence, even the snake in comparison is beautiful with vital reality; for although the snake is a creature of the underworld and the oozing marsh, it shares in the same life as mankind: "He struggles as we struggle, he enjoys the sun, he comes to the water to drink, he curls up ... to sleep". 

We can and must make peace with the serpent and let him take his place among us; it will, writes Lawrence, be a sign of bliss when we are reconciled in this fashion. Unfortunately, however, more and more men and women seem drawn in the direction of carrion and insects and baboons; desperate to remain ideally intact and feeding on putrescence. 

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'The Crown', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988). The line quoted in the text is on p. 297. Line quoted beneath the photo of a baboon is on p. 295.