Today, 8 August, is International Cat Day. Which seems as good an excuse as any to write about Blenheim. Not that I generally need much of an excuse. Living with Blenheim is one of the great joys of my life, but it is also a useful daily reminder that loving an animal and understanding an animal aren’t necessarily the same thing.
International Cat Day has been celebrated on 8 August since 2002, when it was established by the International Fund for Animal Welfare. Since 2020, its custodianship has been with International Cat Care, the UK-based charity which works internationally to improve cat welfare through better knowledge and understanding. So, despite what social media might sometimes suggest, International Cat Day isn’t simply an annual opportunity to fill the internet with photographs of cats, although I am entirely in favour of doing that too. It is also a chance to think more deeply about their welfare, their needs and our responsibilities towards them.
That makes it particularly relevant to the work we do at Cats Protection. Our purpose is beautifully simple: to help people see the world through cats’ eyes. Our mission is to be a movement of people championing the welfare of cats. We lead society in a richer understanding of all cats and care for those that need our help. And our vision is a society where every cat has their best possible life because they are protected, cared for and understood by everyone.
That last word, understood, is particularly important. One of the easiest mistakes we can make with animals is to interpret their behaviour entirely through human eyes. We assume we know what they are thinking or feeling because we imagine how we would feel in the same situation. But a cat isn’t a small, furry human. Cats experience their surroundings differently, communicate differently and form relationships differently. Their senses work differently too, and what makes them feel safe, what causes them stress, how they interact with other cats and how they choose to interact with us are all shaped by their nature as cats.
If we are serious about their welfare, we have to make the effort to understand their world rather than expecting them simply to fit into ours. In other words, we need to try to see the world through cats’ eyes.
Blenheim is perfectly capable of making his views known. Living alongside him is a small daily exercise in observation: noticing the signals, learning what makes him comfortable, discovering when company is welcome and when it isn’t, and recognising that something which seems insignificant to me may matter rather a lot to him. Crucially, it also means remembering that he doesn’t exist simply for my benefit. He has his own needs, preferences and boundaries.
That sounds obvious, but I think it is quite a profound idea, because somewhere in all of this lies a lesson that goes beyond cat welfare. To understand another species properly requires curiosity, patience and empathy. It requires us to accept that another living being can experience exactly the same environment very differently from us. It asks us to observe behaviour without immediately judging it, to be curious about what might lie behind it, to recognise signals which aren’t necessarily expressed in the way we would express them ourselves, and sometimes to change our behaviour rather than expecting the other party to change theirs.
Those strike me as pretty useful human skills. So much misunderstanding between people begins with an assumption that someone else sees, hears, interprets or experiences the world in broadly the same way that we do, when of course they don’t. I am not suggesting that human relationships can be reduced to lessons in cat behaviour, but there is something rather wonderful about sharing our lives with another species and gradually learning to see the world, however imperfectly, from a perspective other than our own. Perhaps that is one of the gifts animals give us.
Cats bring companionship, comfort, humour, routine and affection into millions of people’s lives. They connect people and communities, and they give us something to care about beyond ourselves. I see that every day in my professional life as Chief Executive of Cats Protection, but I experience it personally every day with Blenheim too.
Perhaps that is why our purpose at Cats Protection resonates with me so strongly. Helping people to see the world through cats’ eyes isn’t simply a nice phrase. It asks us to do something quite profound: to stop assuming that our experience of the world is the only one that matters. If we understand cats better, we can make better choices for them, recognise their needs, respect their boundaries, reduce unnecessary stress and give many more cats the opportunity to live genuinely good lives.
And perhaps practising that curiosity about another living being also does something to us. It reminds us to look again, to listen, to resist easy assumptions and occasionally to see something from a point of view very different from our own. That’s unquestionably good for cats, and I suspect it’s pretty good for humans too.Happy International Cat Day — and, of course, happy International Cat Day to Blenheim.
