(credit fatcatart.com)
John Gray: 'What can we learn from cats? Don't live in an imagined future'
They are cats. They do what they want, all the time. “Cats are a window outside the human world,” says Gray, “They are themselves, and they stay themselves. They adapt to human ways. But they don’t adopt human ways.”
In other words, we should stop trying to project human attributes on to these inscrutable creatures. “Cats are cats and humans are humans and we can’t become cats,” Gray says. “I think the question should really be, can we learn anything from them that is beneficial to us? I think we can. By looking at something so different to us, that lives alongside us, we can shake the more harmful habits that go with being human. Such as worrying about the future and not living enough in the present, or being content with the life we have.” Also, sleeping a lot.
The ancient Egyptians got it right. They worshipped cats: their deity Mut, the mother goddess, was frequently depicted as a cat. “It’s because they are so self-possessed and imperious,” says Gray. “They do what they want to do. And live the way they want to live.” Perhaps a better relationship between human and cat would approximate these ancient ways. After all, you don’t need to understand the ways of a cat to worship it.
(Excerpt from John Gray’s interview with Tim Adams on theguardian.com)
