Society & Animals 21 (2013) 93-104 brill.com/soan And Say the Cat Responded? Getting Closer to the Feline Gaze Kara White Graduate of Brown University [email protected] Abstract Within the field of multispecies ethnography, a lingering question remains regarding how we can understand the nonhuman side of the human–nonhuman encounter. Many authors have ventured into this topic on a theoretical level, but none have proposed an effective method- ological approach for how to achieve their goals. After examining the pitfalls experienced when acting as a volunteer at an animal shelter, I propose that in order to get closer to the feline gaze, we must first utilize an understanding of a cat’s sensory capabilities. Recognizing that a cat’s subjectivities are necessarily mediated by their bodies, understanding how they perceive the world involves a sensory experiential methodology. Highlighting the many contributions of phenomenological frameworks along with their limitations, I argue that getting closer to the feline gaze means appreciating species differences rather than arguing for the shared qualities held across species. Because of the species barrier, an interdisciplinary approach must meld phe- nomenological with ethological methods to grasp the interspecies relationships created by the cat–human encounter. Keywords subjectivities, cats, animal shelters, multispecies ethnography How Do We Begin to Talk About the Cat’s Perspective? The question of how we begin to talk about the cat’s perspective is how I began this paper. It was prompted by the new and exciting research being conducted in multispecies ethnography that seeks to include the nonhuman within the study of the human. This notion that the human world is not confined to humans alone provides a more holistic way to think about the human experience: “Multispecies ethnography centers on how a multitude of organisms’ livelihoods shape and are shaped by political, economic, and cul- tural forces” (Kirksey & Helmreich, 2010, p. 545). By decentering human agency, the subjecthood of other species is allowed to be in the spotlight, illu- minating many other ways of being in the world and making the web of © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI: 10.1163/15685306-12341280 94 K. White / Society & Animals 21 (2013) 93-104 interconnections between humans and other species clearer. In fact, we cocon- struct our lives in many ways with other living organisms that are not always obvious. According to Haraway, “If we appreciate the foolishness of human exceptionalism, then we know that becoming is always becoming with— in a contact zone where the outcome, where who is in the world, is at stake” (2008, p. 244). How, then, does the feline gaze fit into this? Many previous studies on human–animal relationships have engaged with how various humans think about and interact with nonhuman animals, from Geertz’s analysis of a cock- fight in Bali (1977) where the animals functioned as symbols to conceptual- izations of multispecies clouds in the wake of the H5N1 virus in Indonesia (Lowe, 2010). However, these very important studies do not venture deep enough into an equally important side of this relationship: the nonhuman side (Sanders & Arluke, 1993). Assuming that it is impossible to know anything from the animal’s perspective without being anthropomorphic in some way (Noske, 1997), this specter of human projection has prevented many from exploring the issue further in the social sciences. Nonetheless, a few studies have recently tried to bridge this gap in formulating different ways that inter- species relationality occurs from the nonhuman side. Sanders and Arluke (1993) argue for the existence of a mind in nonhuman animals that is not predicated on linguistic facility. Their argument rests on the idea that the concept of the mind “is reconceived as the product of interac- tion in which intimates are actively involved in contextualizing, identifying, understanding, and responding to the defined subjective experience of the nonverbal other” (Sanders & Arluke, 1993, p. 384). Looking at interactions between dogs and their human owners, they posit that one can understand a dog’s mind by his interactions in the interspecies encounter. In a response to Sanders and Arluke a year later, Hilbert counters by saying that attributing minds to animals is necessarily anthropocentric and an “artifact of our cul- ture” (1994, p. 535). Hilbert suggests that Sanders and Arluke’s attribution of mind to animals is of necessity trying to make them like us. He argues further that minds are not necessarily the domain of humans either. Instead, he sug- gests, we use the term “sentience” for both humans and animals because it lacks the cultural baggage of “mind” derived from the Cartesian division between the physical and the nonphysical. Can we get away from this “cultural baggage” when talking about the per- spective of the nonhuman in multispecies intimacy and interaction by simply choosing another term? Is “sentience” sufficient, or is there another term that also conveys the subjective experience of the nonhuman? Nimmo defines subjectivities as the “conscious inner lives of subjects” (2012, p. 178). He, K. White / Society & Animals 21 (2013) 93-104 95 however, also argues against the use of “mind” when referring to the inner lives of animals as a “Cartesian chimera” that is best considered as “constructed relationally in interspecies interaction” (p. 184). He prefers the term “animal being” to dislodge the idea of animal subjectivity from biology or at the other end of the Cartesian dichotomy, the mind. Woodward uses the term “animal gaze”: “it is the gaze of a being who actively claims his or her own subjectivity, looking at another who takes her human subjectivity as a given” (2008, p. 1). By evoking the Lacanian term gaze, as Woodward does, I hope to imply that the cat is a subject, actively constituting its own self as it looks upon others in a mutual becoming that reveals itself through the nonverbal interspecies interaction. It implies not only that the cat is a subject but also that her subjecthood is conveyed by her own methods, not by the human who recognizes the gaze. A cat, in this instance, is not simply an object, subject to a human gaze, but he or she is a subject who also gazes back. By using the term gaze, I hope to leave behind a lot of the baggage Hilbert suggests is attached to terms like mind, however I also recognize that it would be impossible to remove all cultural connotations of any word. Can we get away from Nimmo’s contention that talking about animal mind/subjectivities/ animal being/sentience is a “Cartesian chimera”? Although the interactions between shelter workers and the public have been covered in a sociological context (Arluke, 1994), the only ethnographic attempt to address cats on their own terms vis a vis humans in the social land- scape of a cat shelter has been Alger and Alger’s Cat Culture: The Social World of a Cat Shelter, which was published in 2003. By looking at specifically how the cats treated the volunteers, they saw the cats treating the volunteers like they would other cats. In other words, the cats acted and reacted towards the human volunteers as if they were also cats. They would “manipulate” the human volunteers to get special feeding locations or interfere with volunteer activities in order to get attention. They argued that a cat’s ability to manipu- late the volunteers into getting what they wanted showed that they had the ability “to take the role of the human” (Alger & Alger, 2003, p. 70). Taking on the perspective, or umwelt, of another species engages the same processes of interaction that are required of two members of the same species. Indeed, when a human must interact with another human, “the belief that we can know the intentions, goals, and desires of other selves allow us to act in this world” (Kohn, 2007, p. 7). It gives a member of any species the ability to be social. This effect is especially pronounced between a human and companion ani- mal over time. These close interspecies friendships (Sanders, 2003) form the 96 K. White / Society & Animals 21 (2013) 93-104 basis by which a relationship is built. “The partners in the relationship spend time together and share routine activities” (Sanders, 2003, p. 414), and this is even more clear in the case of mutual play. In play, both actors must be able to recognize a shared goal and to utilize “appropriate moves and counter- moves” (Sanders, 2003, p. 414). “In other words, both person and companion animal must, in a rudimentary way, take the role of the other and adjust their actions on the basis of this orientation” (Sanders, 2003, p. 415). Derrida similarly talks about this effect: Pretense presupposes taking the other into account; it therefore supposes, simultane- ously, the pretense of pretense—a simple supplementary move by the other within the strategy of the game. That supplementarity is at work from the moment of the first pretense. (Derrida, 2003, p. 136) Following this emphasis on close interspecies friendships, Dutton and Wil- liams (2004) likewise argue for the importance of interspecies intimacy in cross-species understanding. They also argue, like Nimmo (2012), that “the assumption that we have no intimacy with how other animals experience the world is an inherent feature of this divisive view of the mind” (Dutton & Williams, 2004, p. 221). Thus, rather than viewing the mind as an inner repository separate from physical, bodily actions, they argue that behavior and social interactions can be a window of sorts to the subjective experiences of nonhuman animals. If an individual’s inner experiences, or subjectivities, can be revealed through interspecies friendships, the attempt to understand the feline gaze becomes feasible.