Comments on: A website that makes me feel ill.

By: stuff on my cat fan

stuff on my cat fan — Wed, 30 May 2007 19:50:13 +0000

I spend some of my “bored” time at work looking at SOMC. I know that we all love our cats very much. My cat annoys me and I annoy him back. But I love him. And I think for the most part the cats on that site really don’t care. Think about it, cats have pretty boring lives sometimes. a lot of them love attention. And I’m sure they feel like having stuff put on them is attention. Cat’s don’t put up with stuff they don’t like. Often times the people who took the pictures post comments on the site. Frequently it’s stuff like “my cat sat there for 10 minutes while I took those pictures!” and “my cat got there on his own.”

By: Meredith

Meredith — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 04:14:45 +0000

Well, it looks like my site beat me to leaving a comment here! Sorry about that. I want to say that just because we might disagree about StuffOnMyCat.com, does not mean I don’t like you – Amanda, or anybody who has commented here. I don’t think any of you are dumb or anything like that…I just have a different view about the purposes of that website. For what it’s worth, my mom agrees with most of you, she thinks most of the cats look annoyed. But please don’t hate me just because I have a different view about the site…I don’t hate you. I just wanted you to know that.

By: Amanita.net » Blog Archive » Back to Stuff on My Cat

Amanita.net » Blog Archive » Back to Stuff on My Cat — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 15:32:10 +0000

[…] I found my way to a corner of the web where concern is expressed about the website StuffOnMyCat.com. I was a little surprised by the suggestion that the cats minded or were being objectified in some way. I always thought that most of the pictures were just amusing, another form of playing with kitty. They certainly aren’t hurting the cats, nobody is putting crushing weights on the cats, it’s more like “oh this is my cute kitty she looks funny with a deck of cards on her!” A few of the cats look annoyed, like this reindeer cat, but nobody is being hurt here. Humans give their cats lots and lots of love, and we play with them, and we goof around with them. I’ve had cats all my life and I wouldn’t consider them to be objectified – it’s just silly. I guess I’m sorry StuffOnMyCat.com offended the posters on that site, but I simply don’t understand where they’re coming from. […]

By: Charles

Charles — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 09:43:58 +0000

In all fairness, maybe some of those people submitting photos are friends with their cats, and don’t objectify them. For them, it’s like putting things on a human friend and taking pictures: it’s a joke you can both laugh at, and at any given time, either participant can be the butt of a joke, and more importantly, there is no imbalance of power – both friends are equals. This is perhaps where I disagree with the blogger when she says, “There’s something really not right, not about the website itself.” I think the website itself promotes the idea of cat-as-an-object even when the participants may not think that way.

By: Charles

Charles — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 05:54:43 +0000

Putting stuff on your friends while they sleep is entirely different. You haven’t objectified them – quite the opposite: you EXPECT them to feel something when they wake up and discover it.

By: M

Mon, 03 Jul 2006 07:59:16 +0000

I hadn’t seen the site in that way. This is probably a personal failing though – I’ve done things to friends like that in their sleep. Putting stuff on them, post-its, drawn on them… But then again, friends are in more of a position to wreak venegenace than a cowed cat.

By: Charles

Charles — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 22:54:57 +0000

I keep parrots, but I’ve never set out to teach one to talk. It just doesn’t impress me when they do that, and I don’t suppose I’d have the patience for it, anyway. Nevertheless, they end up picking up words anyway, as well as various sounds in their envionment, such as the telelphone, or the “beep” of the microwave. They do this naturally, and I suppose they get some enjoyment out of it. So, intentionally teaching a parrot to talk is not abusive. Why is it, then, that I still feel the same way about those people who insist a parrot should talk as I do about those people who pile stuff on top of their cats? I guess it’s because the only moral compass is not whether or not the animal is voluntarily participating, or whether or not the animal is annoyed. There’s something repulsive to me about treating a living animal as though its only purpose is to entertain humans.

By: Julia

Julia — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 17:25:24 +0000

Cats – I don’t like cats, except when I get to know one, chances are better than 50% that I’ll like that particular cat. I’m allergic and I don’t know how they’re going to behave around me, so I avoid them when I can.

If I’m visiting a friend who has a cat or two, I do not mess with the cat unless the cat has decided it wants to interact with me. One of my favorite cats (died of cancer more than a year ago, unfortunately) was part siamese and would mrowr loudly at anyone who came in. I’d talk back to her, and since she seemed to enjoy having conversations with me, this was what I’d do when I visited the person she lived with.

I know exactly one cat who might put up with having something put on him, but if he wasn’t cool with it, he’d get up and walk away fairly promptly. He doesn’t mind having a toddler get a little rough with him for a little while; when it gets to be too much for him, he just walks off, and we don’t chase the kitty once he’s left the room. (If he wants to be played with some more after a short break, he’ll hang around and put himself back into toddler range.)

I’m not going to visit the site. I don’t like seeing pictures of cats in distress, and from the sounds of it, many of them are.

Besides the allery issue, I don’t want a cat because I wouldn’t be able to restrict it the way I can a dog, and I have spaces I don’t want an animal messing with. It wouldn’t be fair to either myself or the cat. A cat is wonderful as it is, and for me to co-exist with one happily, it would need to be less cat-like, and that’s wrong.

By: Ettina

Ettina — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 18:49:41 +0000

“The solution to this is much more about shifting power imbalances, than teaching all animals and non-speaking people their “native language”. There will always be animals and non-speaking people who can’t speak their “native languages”. Making it totally socially unacceptable to treat people like dolls is feasible, training everyone to say things in the majority language is not.”

Often times it seems that people think a perason “can’t communicate” when they clearly are, they’re just not being listened to. In those cat pictures, if you understand cat communication you can tell whether the cat likes it or not. I remember my younger brother was upset that my pet rats kept running from him to me when he held them, and I realized the problem was that he didn’t understand their rat communication. He’d hold them in ways that made them feel like they were going to fall, for example, without realizing they felt that way. So I told him “if they squeak, they’re hurt, if they twirl their tail, they feel like they’re going to fall” etc and his interactions with the rats improved (although one of them still didn’t like him, because he’s young and moves fast and she startles easily).

By: Stef

Stef — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 17:27:52 +0000

I have spent a lot of time around a lot of cats and I believe I can understand some of their communications. It seems to me that a lot of the cats pictured in Stuff on My Cat are unhappy about having stuff on them, but other cats don’t mind.

I think this one is participating:

I think this one is annoyed:

I think this one is a little bit annoyed but not much:

I don’t spend time at the site generally because the majority of the cats pictured seem annoyed and that makes me sad.