Well, hello there. This is an exciting issue for me to share with you. For some time, I was stashing away any links or long reads about cats that I’d come across on the internet, and here we have the first Kat’s Kable special edition in… a long time (just under two years). It’s about cats! Cat’s Kable, if you will. I love cats. They’re great. The one that lives where I live, Angel, has taught me a lot about life, being content, the meaning of consent, how to say no, and a lot more. Every interaction I have with a cat feels like paying respects to a deity of some sort. Anyhow, here’s ten things about cats, hope you enjoy!

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1. ‘I made a love letter to the city and the cats’ - The Guardian

Filmmaker Ceyda Torun made a film called Kedi (it’s the Turkish word for cat) that celebrates the street cats of Istanbul. I need to watch it, and this is a lovely little interview she gives to The Guardian.

There’s nobody here that doesn’t have a memory of cats: no grandmother, no generation has been here without cats, so they’re ingrained in our collective memory. People tend to be in awe of the freedom cats have, their ability to go in and out of almost anywhere. They show up in political situations, universities; they go in and out of places that are forbidden or dangerous for humans. And cats provide this wonderful opportunity for people in Istanbul to pick a moment to be affectionate with a being that doesn’t judge them, that doesn’t have complicated human relationship issues. We have a lot of “cat daddies”.

2. Palmerston the cat returns to Foreign Office ‘after stress leave’ - Evening Standard

This is definitely not a “longform” piece like the ones that usually feature on this newsletter, but it is entertaining and it fits the theme of this issue. Palmerston is a cat who “works” at the UK Foreign Office. He needed a stress leave, and is back.. and now there are special rules dubbed the “Palmerston Protocols”to ensure that he remains in a good state of mind.

3. Artist Imagines a World Where Humans Live Among Giant Cats - Sad and Useless

Andrey Scherbak photoshops giant cats onto pictures and the results are brilliant.

4. Why Do Cats Love Bookstores? - Lithub

[…] you share one of the countless lists of cats sleeping next to stacks of bestsellers floating around on the web, and you take for granted that felines and bookstores go hand in hand like so many of the truly great pairings in this world. Cats are quiet and want to be left alone for the bulk of the day; they’re animals that long for solitude, much like readers and writers. It began as a working relationship, but became something more than that, something deeper. Cats ultimately became integral to the bookstore experience, a small part of why you’d rather go to your local indie than buy online or go to a chain. Sure, not every great bookstore has a cat prowling around; but in the ones that do, the cats are a big part of what makes those stores great (along with, you know, the booksellers and the comfortable places to sit and read).

5. What I Learned From a Stray Cat About Living With Anxiety - Vice

“When a cat appeared on my windowsill, I tried to tame it in much the same way that I was attempting to control my anxious mind. I failed at both—but learned something about living with anxiety along the way.”

But I don’t have to change Nubbin to have a relationship with him, to enjoy his presence. I don’t have to change my thoughts in order to be healthy, to enjoy my life. That’s a kind of freedom I never imagined myself having, as someone who previously thought I would be a broken person with anxious thoughts until the day I’d be a fixed person with no anxious thoughts. When the lesson was wrapped in a furry package, it was easier for me to receive.

6. Lost Cat: An Illustrated Meditation on Love, Loss, and What It Means To Be Human - Brain Pickings

I read Caroline Paul and Wendy MacNaughton’s book Lost Cat a few years ago, and it was really lovely. It’s about a cat, Tibby, who briefly disappears, but then reappears five days later with a habit of going to a new, secret place where he eats and spends a considerable amount of time. The whole episode is funny and yet heart-rending. The illustrations are great also (all of MacNaughton’s work is!).

7. Dissertations Written by My Cat Oscar - The New Yorker (soft paywalled)

“ ‘Give Me Bread and Roses’: Ethical Solutions to the Starvation of Oscar Between Breakfast at 8 a.m. and Dry Snacks at 10 a.m.”

“ ‘Sunrise, Sunset’: Inverse Proportionality and Oscar’s Warm Nap Spot on the Floor Throughout the Day”

8. Of Bohumil Hrabal’s Six Loves, Guess How Many Were Cats? - Lithub

This is an excerpt from a book that I’d like to read sometime, All My Cats by Bohumil Hrabal.

It happened that when I was in Prague, when I was at my wits’ end, when I could write no more and I couldn’t seem to snap out of feeling off-kilter and afraid and alone, I’d jump onto a bus and during the hour-long ride through the snowy countryside, I’d be on edge, wondering if the cats were still alive, and as I stepped off the bus and walked down the lane, I’d feel weak in the knees, and when all five cats ran to meet me, I’d gather them, one by one, into my arms and press them to my forehead, and somehow or other those cats cured me of my hangovers and depressions and I’d press them to me again and they knew what I was feeling and would rub up against me and I’d light a fire in the stove and feed them chunks of meat and bowls of milk.

9. An Illustrated Study of Black Cats, the “Little Aliens” of the Feline World - Hyperallergic

Lovely lovely drawings of black cats by Peter Arkle. Black cats are enigmatic, gorgeous but also difficult to tell apart/photograph uniquely. Together with Amy Goldwasser, he illustrated a book called All Black Cats Are Not Alike.

10. John Gray: ‘What can we learn from cats? Don’t live in an imagined future’ - The Guardian

Gray believes that humans turned to philosophy principally out of anxiety, looking for some tranquillity in a chaotic and frightening world, telling themselves stories that might provide the illusion of calm. Cats, he suggests, wouldn’t recognise that need because they naturally revert to equilibrium whenever they’re not hungry or threatened. If cats were to give advice, it would be for their own amusement.
and

“Cats live for the sensation of life, not for something they might achieve or not achieve,” he says. “If we attach ourselves too heavily to some overarching purpose we’re losing the joy of life. Leave all those ideologies and religions to one side and what’s left? What’s left is a sensation of life – which is a wonderful thing.”

See ya soon.-Kat.