FELINE WOO-DARWINISM?

Something sweet ahead of a stormy year

Russian scientists have conducted in-depth research, compiled their international colleagues’ equally in-depth research, and collated the whole lot regarding an aspect of evolutionary biology that most would dismiss as trivial - but fortunately for us, they have found it worthy of their sustained efforts (and grants).

The so-called ‘domestication’ of cats would seem to be ‘settled science’. But sensitive scientists have not been satisfied with the notion that humans simply tricked cats into cohabitation for the sake of catching mice in order to protect their precious grain reserves.

The scientists wondered about something that is in fact more fundamental - what could possibly be the evolutionary reason for cats’ propensity to purr? If cats were ‘domesticated’ in order to be useful catchers of mice, what is the added benefit of purring that plays no part in the catching of mice?

The scientists have ended up with a rather delightful extra-darwinian story that deeply honors the humble cat…

It could well be that it’s the cats who ‘domesticated’ humans - nudged humans into a fruitful partnership with cats. The business of humans harnessing feline potential to catch mice on their behalf is just a flat utilitarian notion, reductively darwinian, unpoetic. If anything, controlling mice in the granary is a side effect, a fringe benefit of the main purpose.

The main purpose is in the purr. How cats do the purring, physiologically, is still unclear. But what has been elucidated is that purring comes with a particular gene that appeared in the feline genome probably during the neolithic ‘revolution’.

Cats that don’t have the gene don’t purr. So purring is not a vital element in the average cat’s survival kit, and it doesn’t help with the catching of mice and birds for dinner. Purring is just its own thing, you might say gratuitous. As if suddenly a freaky gene popped in, just like that, at random, and it happened to make cats purr?

Ah, but perhaps we should consider the hidden hand of Nature’s wisdom, not just utilitarian but intent on generating cooperative connections within the complex tissue of life.

Cats purr because it makes humans feel good, say the scientists. Cats purr when humans caress them - it’s a virtuous circle. Human caress -> cat purr -> human caress continues -> cat purrs further. In the process, tiny ripples of bliss go to and fro between the cat and the human, because the cat purrs because the human caresses because the cat purrs because…

There’s an obvious vibrational aspect - the Russian scientists don’t seem so interested in it, but I think it’s quite essential. Humans are more or less aware of the vibrational nature of everything, and more prosaically those of us who hum, tone, sing know intuitively that it makes us feel good. It is one of those no-tech self-generated promoters of mental and general well-being. More esoterically, it participates in the larger unheard symphony of our being-alive.

Arguably, the cat’s purr is the equivalent of the human’s hum. It serves no ‘survival-of-the-fittest’ purpose. How about ‘survival-of-the-happiest’? A purring cat is a happy cat, is it not? When I caress the cat, perhaps its purr is co-vibrating with the inner vibrations inside me that I cannot hear but it can perceive loud and clear?

Who started this co-vibrational game, the cat or the human? Did a cat first inch closer to a human, millennia ago, with a tentative seductive purr? Hardly. The gene was not there yet, so the tentative purr would at best have been an awkward gurgle. Anyway, a cat starts to purr only on close and trusting contact with a human, so it’s not the purr that comes first. And a cat does not purr in order to be given food, which would be the (irrelevant) utilitarian explanation of the purr coming first.

The scientists’ hypothesis is that cats began to ‘realize’ that their fluffy cuteness was attractive to at least some humans, and caused the latter to touch them in a caressing way. The cats ‘figured’ that this could be a very nice kind of friendship to develop, and something in their anatomy responded with some kind of inner vibration which caused a peculiar gene to form, resulting sooner than later in the perfect purr.

(After all, ‘genes’ in their measurable scientific presentation represent less than 5% of the intricate subtle ‘web’ of who each living being actually is in this life. It’s another Russian scientist, Piotr Gariaiev, who discovered and cultivated this greater reality, in real-life therapeutic applications. Perhaps the cats’ desire for human friendship was so great as to ‘create’ the relevant gene out of its subtle precursor.)

Perhaps there is a lot more in ‘evolution’ that has to do with developing cooperative bonds within the mycelium of life, than with ‘competition’ and ‘survival of the fittest’.

Perhaps the humble cat is a wise teacher of ‘gratuitous’ co-creativity encouraging us to generate nuances of happiness and well-being of which at present we have no idea.

Utilitarian aspects that our mechanistic mindset focuses upon are, says the cat, but the by-product. Perhaps we need to rethink how we ‘do manifestation’, hmmm?