I spend the majority of my days with two cats, Jerry and Sterling. They’re charming, weird companions who typically spend their days staring out windows, napping, and occasionally wrestling, though I’ve recently noticed that anytime I go near the kitchen Sterling follows me.
The reason he follows me is simple: the kitchen is where food comes from and Sterling likes to eat. A lot. We don’t know much about Sterling’s background, but do know that he lived in the wild before we adopted him. He is perennially focused on food, and anytime I go near it’s origin he tails me like a night-stalker.
Sterling is not discriminating about what he eats. Cat food, human food, chicken food, insects, bugs, carpeting, cardboard, blankets, leaves, and bits of destroyed toys have all gone down his throat. Several months ago he put his two front teeth deep into my wrist; I escaped before he could swallow, and had only a week’s course of antibiotics to show for it.
Like a good Hollywood plot-boiler, Sterling’s stalking unfurls in three stages. First there’s the tail. Here he acts coy and uninterested, as if he just happened to be loitering near the fridge. Second there’s the rubbing. If he still had all his sex organs Sterling would be what our DSM friends call a Frotteur. Lastly, there’s the yowling. Sterling is very vocal. He has much to say, particularly about food. When things reach this stage he cries so loudly that the neighbors are alerted. Unsurprisingly, his cries put Jerry on edge.
Jerry excels at lounging. Typically the lounging is a precursor to his sleeping. Jerry is even better at sleeping than he is at lounging. Jerry also thrives at being unimpressed. Like a smug teen who’s already seen it all, he’s over most things before they begin.
If he had his druthers Jerry would spend most days asleep. In those brief moments when he’s awake, Jerry’s usually yawning indifferently at his surroundings and preparing to go back to sleep. However, when Sterling begins crying Jerry wakes up. And when Sterling’s cries reach a fever pitch, Jerry overcomes his natural disinterest and soon we’re all gathered in the kitchen. Jerry’s arrival intensifies Sterling’s crying, because Sterling believes Jerry wouldn’t have put in the effort to enter the kitchen unless food was about to arrive. As Sterling cries louder, his feverish caterwauling alerts Jerry that Sterling is about to receive food. And that is one of the few things Jerry cares deeply about.
Like Sterling, Jerry lived in the wild before we adopted him. It was there that he developed his Code of Equality, which states that no one — cat, human or otherwise — shall ever receive nourishment unless Jerry is present to obtain his rightful portion.
All of the above explains how I recently went vaguely near the kitchen in search of a pencil sharpener only to find myself surrounded by two increasingly frantic cats.
Screeching anxiously about your food seems like very normal behavior for cats. What struck me is how eerily similar these actions are to my own. How often do I listen to the insistent cries of others only to rush over, fearfully alarmed that I’m missing out on some nutritious morsel essential to my wellbeing?
This process reminds me of what seems to occur on Wall Street, in contemporary politics, and the news that reports on both. It feels very similar to what drives Hollywood, and not just the Hollywood that makes movies but the productive powers behind most music, literature, video games, etc. Social media’s a no-brainer, as is gossip in general, and these behaviors are definitely the lynchpin allowing the dump-truck of marketing to chuggle onward. That latter is a force so potent and ubiquitous you often forget it’s a force. Turns out that’s not an accident.
On some level each of these is noises about noises about noises. And the truly strange thing is that none of them need have any foundation in reality. Like Sterling, anyone can start howling about anything — Biden’s age, Trump’s hands, Musk’s nonsense, So-and-So’s reactions to any of the above… — and soon we’re all scrambling for the kitchen.
I should make it clear that Jerry and Sterling get fed several times each day, so there are times when their collective cries pertain to real sustenance. But most of the time they’re screaming about nothing. And sadly, that’s become an eerily familiar sound.