Live Animals
Last month, there was a tragic fire that claimed the life of the founder and owner of the Happy Cat Sanctuary, along with many of the cats he had rescued. Hearing how the sanctuary was founded, I adopted a stray cat from Abu Dhabi.
I saw her photo online, along with a call-out for someone to foster her. She had already arrived at Gatwick. We ended up keeping her.
She’s an incredible creature. Unlike any other cat I’ve met. Her name on arrival is Isabella, this may change.
She looks laid back. She is not.
I’ve previously shared at The Story why I have such an affinity with cats. And it deepens over time.
The algorithm has clearly picked up on this and in a dark, inverted demonstration of how social media and the systems that hold us are often broken, I’m now being shown post after post on Threads from people who have just lost their cats. Stories of people mourning their best friends, trying to articulate what they meant to them. Over and over. Hundreds of them.
Each and every time I open the app.
There’s no way to ask for it to stop. No way to report that the algorithm has a shadow. If I use Threads, I must be served and witness the grief of losing an animal someone loved.
This demonstrates where we are right at this point in time in our abusive relationship with social media.
Being called to witness is profound.
But does an algorithm have a right to call us to witness?
I don’t have an answer right now.
I find it both sad and interesting.
Can you honestly say any algorithm has ever worked for you?
A Cat Clan
We have six cats, plus one visiting black chonk of a stray who visits me every couple of days.
I’m enjoying life with a cat who can climb brick walls with her claws. The first few weeks were tough and brutal for the other cats in the family. She’s a force of nature. It’s has been a process of meeting a very different version of the same animal. A distant wild echo. Thrumming with beauty and wildness and love at the heart of our home.
In the next year or two, a number of things will fundamentally change again. And I will share that process and journey. Calling the others to witness.
And I am going to try to post here twice a week. And share the process towards a number of new works, after spending years in development. Watching ideas wither and warp. Killing other ideas and projects, watching others die on the vine.
It is all part of the process. There are stories that are not meant to exist. And I have been forced to understand and accept this.
I do know I am eternally greatful for the fact I know how to take an idea from the stage where it only exists in my head, right through each stage of the creative process, to the point it is presented to an audience.
This is a gift. I do not need to ask for permission. I know what I am capable of. There’s a strength to this form of quiet understanding of your limitations and gifts, having tested yourself over and over.
Last year an experiment paid off. And now the people who supported me in that endeavour, get to share in the process of seeing an idea they supported, grow and take space in the world. Where it will eventually exist inside other peoples minds.