the chthonian apollonian cat

the birth of the western eye by Camille Paglia

One of the most misunderstood features of Egyptian life was the veneration of cats, whose mummified bodies have been found by the thousands. My theory is that the cat was the model for Egypt's unique synthesis of principles. The modern cat, the last animal domesticated by man, descends from Felis Lybica, a North African wildcat. Cats are prowlers, uncanny creatures of the night. Cruelty and play are one for them. They live by and for fear, practicing being scared or spooked by humans by sudden rushes and ambushes. Cats dwell in the occult, that is, the "hidden". In the Middle Ages, they were hunted and killed for their association with witches. Unfair? But the cat really is in the league with chthonian nature, Christianity's mortal enemy.

The black cat of Halloween is the lingering shadow or archaic night. Sleeping up to twenty of every twenty-four hours, cats reconstruct and inhabit the primitive night-world. The cat is telepathic - or at least thinks that it is. Many people are unnerved by it's cool stare. Compared to dogs, slavishly eager to please, cats are autocrats of naked self-interest. They are both amoral and immoral, consciously breaking rules. Their "evil" look at such times are no human protection: the cat may be the only animal who savours the perverse or reflects upon it.

Thus the cat is an adept of chthonian mysteries. But it has a hieratic duality. It is eye-intense. The cat fuses the Gorgeon eye of appetite to the detachment of Apollonian eye of contemplation. The cat values invisibility, comically imagining itself undetectable as it slouches across a lawn. But it also fashionably loves to see and be seen; it is a spectator of life's drama, amused, condescending. It is a narcissist, always adjusting its appearance. When it is dishevelled, it's spirits fall.

Cats have a sense of pictorial-composition: they station themselves symmetrically on chairs, rugs, even a sheet of paper on the floor. Cats adhere to an Apollonian metric of mathematical space. Haughty, solitary, precise, they are arbiters of elegance - the principle I find natively Egyptian.

Cats are poseurs. They have a sense of persona - and become visibly embarrassed when reality punctures their reality. The cat's sophisticated personae are the marks of an advanced theatricality. Priest and God of it's own cult, the cat follows a cult of ritual purity, cleaning itself religiously. It makes Pagan sacrifices to itself and may share its ceremonies with the elect. The day of a cat-owner often begins with the discovery of mole guts or mashes mouse limbs on the porch - Darwinian mementos. The cat is the least Christian inhabitant of the average home.