I can actually elaborate on this, because last time I toured the catacombs we had a delightful guide who was a very enthusiastic PhD student and this was, apparently, partly what he was doing his dissertation on. (I talked to him for a while one-on-one; we bonded over the sweet hell that is graduate school.) Anyway, according to him, there was this weird artsy quasi-anarchist amateur-spelunking group that used to throw these very illegal parties down in the catacombs. This, of course, isn’t safe at all because (1) parts of the catacombs are not structurally sound and you risk suffocating or being crushed to death, and (2) they’re damn near impossible to navigate if you don’t know what you’re doing. As in multiple people have literally died of thirst before finding their way out–one of whom finally collapsed a bare twenty meters from the exit, which he couldn’t see because it’s so infernally dark. How’s that for shitty, shitty irony?
Anyway, after stumbling across little bits of evidence that people were exploring the out-of-bounds areas of the catacombs and leaving like, a few cigarette butts and empty bottles behind, the Paris police issued a stern cease-and-desist basically saying, “STOP DOING THAT YOU COULD ALL DIE” and this one group basically said, “Bitch make us” and proceeded to get more and more ostentatious with their bizarre subterranean Magic-Theatre soirees, just to prove that they knew the catacombs better than anybody else and there was pretty much nothing the authorities could do to stop them. The electricity thing in itself isn’t really that mysterious because anywhere you could fit a makeshift movie theatre you could also bring the generators to run it (so long as they’re not gas-powered, because underground that would probably mean carbon monoxide poisoning…not that safety was the first priority here). It would be a hassle, but doable. That’s not the good part. The good part is that not only did they illegally set up an entire movie theatre in the tunnels under the city of Paris, but they left it there just to taunt the authorities. Eventually this kind of stuff stopped. Nobody really knows why except the pranksters themselves, I suppose, but literally only in Paris do you get a troupe of drama queens as epic as they are unapologetically petty.
They better have played Frankenstein. This is the kind of levels of punk goth that Mary Shelly would want in on.
That thing about how cats think humans are big kittens is a myth, y’know.
It’s basically born of false assumptions; folks were trying to explain how a naturally solitary animal could form such complex social bonds with humans, and the explanation they settled on is “it’s a displaced parent/child bond”.
The trouble is, cats aren’t naturally solitary. We just assumed they were based on observations of European wildcats - but housecats aren’t descended from European wildcats. They’re descended from African wildcats, which are known to hunt in bonded pairs and family groupings, and that social tendency is even stronger in their domesticated relatives. The natural social unit of the housecat is a colony: a loose affiliation of cats centred around a shared territory held by alliance of dominant females, who raise all of the colony’s kittens communally.
It’s often remarked that dogs understand that humans are different, while cats just think humans are big, clumsy cats, and that’s totally true - but they regard us as adult colonymates, not as kittens, and all of their social behaviour toward us makes a lot more sense through that lens.
They like to cuddle because communal grooming is how cats bond with colonymates - it establishes a shared scent-identity for the colony and helps clean spots that they can’t easily reach on their own.
They bring us dead animals because cats transport surplus kills back to the colony’s shared territory for consumption by pregnant, nursing, or sick colonymates who can’t easily hunt on their own. Indeed, that’s why they kill so much more than they individually need - it’s not for fun, but to generate enough surplus kills to sustain the colony’s non-hunting members.
They’re okay with us messing with their kittens because communal parenting is the norm in a colony setting, and us being colonymates in their minds automatically makes us co-parents.
It’s even why many cats are so much more tolerant toward very small children, as long as those children are related to one of their regular humans: they can tell the difference between human adults and human “kittens”, and your kittens are their kittens.
Basically, you’re going to have a much easier time getting a handle on why your cat does why your cat does if you remember that the natural mode of social organisation for cats is not as isolated solitary hunters, but as a big communal catpile - and for that purpose, you count as a cat.
You know, knowing how hard won “queer” was as a positive reclaimed label, it really makes me feel a special kinda gross when I come across ‘’’’’’’’’radicals’’’’’’’’’ saying “kweer” and re-arming it as a pejorative term for overly liberal lgbt people they don’t agree with. I don’t care how bad somebody’s politics are, seeing other lgbt people turn “queer” back upon the community is fucking insensitive and a real slap in the face and will earn you my immediate dislike.
Like seriously, fuck you. We get enough bullshit slurring and co-opting of terms from the right. I identify as queer, and guess what, even using a misspelled version of the word is still slurring people who identify with it.
