Cats: from Zoom meetings to socialism
Cats are in the news (again) because a screen shot of one replaced a lawyer who was speaking to a judge in a US court hearing. The lawyer was heard explaining to the judge that they were not a cat
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-56009062
Cats however have a long association with wisdom- just ask any cat.
It is a by way of history but two (at least) of the most well-known post-1945 British marxist historians had cats.
Eric Hobsbawm had a cat Ticlia (photo Marlene Hobsbawm from Richard Evans 2019 biography of Hobsbawm) and E P Thompson’s cat (name I’m unaware of) was pictured on the back page of the Poverty of Theory. Whether the cats hindered or helped historical research is another matter..
Thompson reported about the views of his cat in the Poverty of Theory. What Hobsbawm’s cat thought does not appear to have been recorded.
Thompson noted that Marchais, a leader of the French Communist Party in the 1970s and 1980s had said that when he came to power he would be kind to animals. ‘My cat, who read this over my shoulder, laughed’. Several paragraphs later Thompson writes ‘I have asked my cat’ (about the evasions of Stalinism) ‘and he has explained that it is all this which made him laugh’.
Our cat Holly often observes Zoom & Teams meetings (& sometimes falls asleep during them-who can blame her?) but rarely shows an inclination to participate
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