Cats gotta cat

And other lessons on being yourself from our feline companions

Cat vision, oil on canvas, 9x12 inches, 2023 - by me, Sarah Thibault

Among the many hats that I wear, I am a professional animal sitter. The majority of my gigs have involved sitting for cats- furry, slightly maniacal little companions to their owners and sometimes me. If I am lucky and have enough time, I break past the initial stage of being The One Who Feeds into something more intimate like an occasional back scratcher, a playtime friend, and a snuggle buddy.

Having grown up with animals I have always loved cats and dogs, and pretty much any kind of pet. I begged my parents to buy me an iguana for a long time, but my mom said a resounding and understandable no. (We already had 2 dogs, 2 cats, and a hamster at the time. So much going on there.)

As an adult I have spent some of the hardest years of my life, including part of the pandemic, taking care of these little animals. Watching them has been a joy and the inspiration for many paintings. If you go into my iPhone photos and filter for “cat,” you will find a whopping 1,247 photos (shocking perhaps for someone who does not own their own cat).

the Nyan Cat gif

I won’t go into the centuries of history that humanity has with cats, but there is a real story there, especially with the black cat’s connection to witchcraft which dates as far back as the ancient Egyptians. In my lifetime before the internet, so still the olden days, I used to joke with my sister that “nothing is cuter than cats.” We used it as a sort of catchphrase every time one did something cute on TV, the sweatshirts our grandma gave us, or the posters at the dentist.

Once we had the internet, others who shared this sentiment memorialized cats in gifs including the early Nyan Cat, many youtube videos, and now Instagram and TikTok accounts. For a long time, the Walker Art Center in my hometown of Minneapolis even held an annual Internet Cat Festival which featured the best and the brightest video tributes to cats in the early aughts and ‘10s. On the other end of the cultural spectrum, Eckhart Tolle made a sweet little book about the zen of pets called Guardians of Being: Spiritual Teachings from Our Dogs and Cats. Many famous artists like Pierre Bonnard, as well as many of my contemporaries, like former The

Side Woo guest Kelly Lynn Jones, pay tribute to their beloveds in their art.

But besides being the cutest, what can we learn from these mysterious creatures?

I had a moment of understanding a couple days ago when I saw one of the cats I house climb up for the millionth time onto the railing near the staircase and perch precariously on its edge while performing some mind-bending acrobatics to reach down, twist a full 180 then stretch its paw toward the ground.

Everywhere all at once (Kiki), oil on canvas, 9 x 12, 2023 - Sarah Thibault

Why did she do this? Because she could. Because it can be fun to be in a body and do the things that it can do with or without a good reason. Because it’s fun to try and take risks and be silly when you’re stuck in a house all day.

I’m sure an animal psychologist could tell me a few reasons why cats act the way they do because of evolution, but I choose to believe that they do it just because of it’s their nature. They can’t help but be themselves and cat around the house. They climb up on tables, on door frames, or on raser thin railings. They stick their heads where they don’t belong and hide under the covers for hours pseudo-hoping you will find them.

Time will cease to exist (Blue), oil on canvas, 18 x 24 inches, 2022 - Sarah Thibault

As I try in adulthood to really come to peace with my body and who I am, I look to these cats for guidance. They are masters of lounging and stretching, whereas I have to essentially trick myself with a video of Jonathan Van Ness into doing the tiniest bit of yoga. They snarf treats with reckless abandon and no guilt. They set strong boundaries when they need to through a well-timed paw swat without regard for your feelings. (It’s not personal, it’s just they don’t want you to pet them there.) And they know how to find hours of entertainment in the smallest, most insignificant piece of garbage.

These lessons are for those who stay attentive - which happens to be another of the cat’s great skills: paying rapt attention to almost nothing at all. Is it another dimension that they are staring into? Do they see a ghost? We will never know.

What have you learned from your cat?