What the Cat Knows (2020)

John Gray's engaging new book, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life, can be understood as exploring the consequences of anti-directionalism about nature. Speed is much more useful to the average cat, especially to the feral street cat whose life depends on it. In Feline Philosophy, Gray attacks this idea with originality and dexterity, through the medium of the cat. In his hands, the cat throws into sharp relief the failings of human "Higher" faculties. This happened to Mèo, a cat rescued as a kitten from the horrors of war-torn Vietnam, whose life was detailed in John Laurence's book The Cat from Hué. Mèo subsequently lived a well-travelled life, first residing in the press compound in Danang, before moving on to a hotel room in Saigon, to Laurence's mother's house in Connecticut, then an apartment in Manhattan, and finally London. "Hodge," Gray argues, "Gave Johnson respite from thought, and so from being human." A cat has no need of philosophy and is all the better for it. Rereading Gray in this light, we might find not only an engaging subversion of contemporary mores and unquestioned sacred cows, but also a portal into another world and another way of being, alien to us yet comprehensible to those with sufficient familiarity - 30 years of familiarity in Gray's case - with its denizens.