Cats, zoe-egalitariansm and the anthropocene
Implications of recent findings about cat ownership and psychosis
“The message for cat owners is clear: there is no evidence that cats pose a risk to children’s mental health,”
Dr Solmi’s recent revelation published in Psychological Medicine this week , is likely to being relief to cat owners and expectant moms everywhere. Prior research reported that early life exposure to Toxoplasma gondii predisposed to psychotic experiences later in life. Cat ownership was seen as an “intermediary marker” of this infection and hence a risk factor.
This is unlikely however to appease ailurophobes and those who believe cats threaten biodiversity and public health. The book Cat Wars issues a dire warning “free-ranging cats are killing birds and other animals by the billions. Equally alarming are the little-known but potentially devastating public health consequences of rabies and parasitic Toxoplasma passing from cats to humans at rising rates.”
This preoccupation however, has not stopped the glamorization of cats in public consciousness. “free-ranging cats” are anthropomorphized in the current cat documentary Kedi released just last week. Set in her hometown of Istanbul , director/producer Ceyda Torun tracks the peregrinations of several cat characters “claiming no owners, the cats of Istanbul live between two worlds, neither wild nor tame — and they bring joy and purpose to those people they choose to adopt. In Istanbul, cats are the mirrors to the people, allowing them to reflect on their lives in ways nothing else could.”
This portrayal of a type of ’zoe-egalitarianism’ is in stark contrast to the anthropocentrism inherent in domestication of cats by humans. This essay in Aeon makes some compelling arguments that raise ethical questions about such domestication “irrespective of whether the treatment is ‘humane”.
In her book , The Post-human, philosopher Rosi Braidotti suggests “…animals have constituted a sort of zoo-proletariat, in a species hierarchy run by the humans….or Haraway’s ‘companion species’..[…] historically confined within infantilizing narratives.”
It is from its position at the top of the hierarchy that mankind has indeed become, as Pierre Huyghe’s current exhibit Untitled (Human Mask) at the Copenhagen Contemporary suggests, “…a force that changes the planet, affecting the physical and biological systems of Earth”.
This realization likely reflects an evolving perspective that we are entering the era of the anthropocene, or , the Capitalocene as this recent London Review of Books excerpt illustrates:
“Human beings now largely determine the make-up of the biosphere as well as the chemistry of the atmosphere and oceans, and this episode of the species’ dominion will one day be as legible in the fossil record as the advancing ice sheets, asteroid impacts or proliferation of new life-forms that distinguished other epochs.”
It is this recognition of the interplay between human and environmental wellbeing that has generated a more integrative view of human health. As an example, The One Health Initiative with its mission to “unite human and veterinary medicine” is an intriguing collaboration between multiple disciplines spanning veterinary medicine, public health , ecology and traditional human medicine.
Thus, beyond its absolution of cats in a specific type of human illness, last week’s article can be seen to expose our broader responsibilities in the context of a shared human-animal-ecosystem destiny.
