I struggle with the general movements towards thinking the animal, I find it somewhat overly confident or audacious, what even is the meaning of this endeavour? Is it meant to challenge our anthropocentric assumptions, to acknowledge human intelligence does not transcend the world and so now we can account for animal intelligence? Contending that our ability to conceive the intelligence of animals is preceded by an intelligence immanent to both because our previous means of categorising animals was predicated on our separable distinctions of them? But who is to say our need to think ourselves in the world is still necessitated by thinking the difference in animal intelligence when we still live alongside them. Majority of the metropolitan creatures we cohabitate and cope with already adhere to our deductions of them; they only have little effect on our livelihood. I’d argue our form of knowledge maybe the only thing we can’t share with animals, hence, humans are either indifferent or frustrated towards them. We are with animals if being with them discloses the weakness within our own attempts to think and justify our being with them.
The love for animals does not derive from a natural affinity, both humans and animals adapt themselves when confronting new environments and each other. Both categories of human and animal must lose each other if they are ever to meet; human no longer resembles human and animal no longer resembles animal (as humans think) in the face of one another. Here I attempt to write how I relate to my cat as I noticed he influences me as much as anything else does.
My cat comes to me for reasons beyond, entering my room carelessly, knowing this place as well as I do. I couldn’t have predicted his choice as much of my own to brings me to this room, it waits as much for both of us. He nests beside me, sometimes eliciting a strong affective response where Im forced to clench my teeth from his adorability. I don’t need to pat or snuggle him intensely, witnessing is enough. I do not decide to feel this way, he decides for me. I believe he is somewhat unaware of my feelings towards him, at times I desire to pet him but resist such urges because he’s asleep and I don’t want to disturb him. Could this be my own indifference to him, he comes to me for company and expects petting like most domestic animals? I cannot deny he wants to join me because sometimes I wish he didn’t come into my room. He frustrates me because he didn’t know I don’t want him here. Or when he persistently licks himself, making irritating sounds that cause me to believe it is even bad for his sake. He is at least indifferent to these wishes of mine, not to be alone but to not have to be under the obligation of his company. However, the same is true from the pleasure I derive from his company, this is not attributable to myself. I don’t know when he will come and if I did, would I just send him away because that’s when he upsets me the most? His own wishes to be next to me condition an experience I cannot instigate alone. He simultaneously inhibits both desires to send him away or excessively pet him, I want him to stay as he came.
