INTERNET CULTURE
The Beauty of Caturday
Why I love Caturday even though I don’t have a cat myself
If I had to pick the two things I love most in life, it would be cats and lazy puns. It is not surprising, then, that every week I await the arrival of Caturday with bated breath. It is a celebration of everything good and wholesome in life, the rare occasion of the Internet being the source of something other than existential dread and misery.
The spirit of Caturday can be summed up like this: “Life may drool, but cats always rule!” This Feline Fantastic is of course nothing but a temporary Apollonian purr over the sharp claws of Dionysos, but this is true of almost anything in life worth pursuing or engaging with.
“Caturday content”, as I will collectively call everything posted and shared on the big day — from pictures and videos to personal anecdotes and experiences between pet owners — is so genuine in its childlike enthusiasm, so unequivocally life-affirming that even a former counterculture icon like Grumpy Cat could easily be brought into the fold — occasionally still growling hard-hitting existential truths, but soon overshadowed by comments about its own shiny fur and cute ears.
Does Caturday teach us that as long as we don’t completely succumb to cynicism, there will always be hope? Can we learn from it that retaining even a little bit of enthusiasm for the small pleasures in life can go a long way towards avoiding a complete descent into despair and misery?
Maybe it does. Maybe it’s nothing but a chance to post cat pics for absolutely no reason and I’m reading too much into this. Either way, I love it.
