Fluffy, Panopticon & An Unspoken Deal

In the process of growing up with Max, Fluffy absorbed lots of his mannerisms including for the lack of better term - "a basic sense of decency" from him as well.

When she was a kitten (and to date) she followed a lot of things Max did - she wants to be kissed before every meal, coming to the door when I get home to following me to bed to get her bedtime treats. I am so grateful when she does what she does... I get to see my Max in her.



During her early days, one thing that pissed her off big time was "inequality".

Why does Max get to go out and she doesn't? This sense of morality in her always reached its peak when Max went out in the backyard while she wasn't allowed.

I don't like cats roaming freely outside the house. In this country, pet cats kill 1.4 billion to 3.7 billion birds (not including the small mammals they kill) so I have a strict rule of not letting her (and Garph) roaming outside.

If you are surprised to see me use Fluffy, pissed, and inequality in the same sentence, Frans de Waal in his book Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society covers a lot of ground on animal emotions.

Ultimately, I believe that reluctance to talk about animal emotions has less to do with science than religion. And not just any religion, but particularly religions that arose in isolation from animals that look like us. With monkeys and apes around every corner, no rain forest culture has ever produced a religion that places humans outside of nature. Similarly, in the East - surrounded by native primates in India, China, and Japan - religions don't draw a sharp line between humans and other animals. Reincarnation occurs in many shapes and forms: A man may become a fish and a fish may become God. Monkey god, such as Hanuman, are common. Only in Judeo-Christian religions place humans on a pedestal, making them the only species with a soul. It's not hard to see how desert nomads might have arrived at this view. Without animals to hold up a mirror to them, the notion that we're alone come naturally to them. They saw themselves as created in God's image and as the only intelligent life on earth. Even today, we're so convinced of this that we search for other such life by training powerful telescopes on distant galaxies.

When first live apes went on display, people couldn't believe their eyes. In 1835, a male chimpanzee arrived at London Zoo, clothed in sailor's suit. He was followed by a female orangutan, who was put in a dress. She called the apes "frightful, and painfully and disagreeably human." This was a widespread sentiment, and even nowadays I occasionally meet people who call apes "disgusting." When the same apes at the London Zoo were studied by the young Charles Darwin, he shared the queen's conclusion but without her revulsion. Darwin felt that anyone convinced of man's superiority ought to go take a look at these apes.

Frans de Waal TED talk on the moral behavior of animals covers exactly how animals get disturbed when they encounter inequality (the famous cucumber vs. grapes treats to monkeys).

This study became very famous and we got a lot of comments, especially anthropologists, economists, philosophers. They didn't like this at all. Because they had decided in their minds, I believe, that fairness is a very complex issue, and that animals cannot have it. And so one philosopher even wrote us that it was impossible that monkeys had a sense of fairness because fairness was invented during the French Revolution. 

I rest my case.

In time, Fluffy, and I came up with an unspoken deal. She can go out with Max if she stays in the patio without jumping outside. In the beginning, she used to run away, hid inside the bushes and I had to chase her to bring inside the house. But in time, with constant and immediate feedback, she learned. Her basic sense of decency inherited from Max came to rescue. She honored our unspoken deal.  She honors it to date.

People ask me how does she stay in the patio without jumping out like other cats? I have to put Garph on a leash in the patio (remember, he didn't grow up with Max) but he is getting better every day.

Of course, an easy and convenient answer of sapiens anchors towards anthropomorphism, and people give me all the credit.  I train them well or some other bullshit such as I am good with animals. That is not true.

The only credit that goes to me is that I signed that unspoken deal with Fluffy. Oxymoronically, the unspoken deal involves constantly talking to her. I talk to her like I do with any other person. If I sense that she is getting ready to jump out I would call out "Fluffy, no", "stop it", "you are not going that" and so on.

This would work when I am with her in the patio. But how does it work even when I am not in the patio and working inside the house? Fluffy has her cat instincts to pounce on a bird or squirrel in the backyard. How does control her innate instincts and respect our deal?

I have written reams and reams on how people cannot even control their gastro-intestinal pleasures and sponsor cruelty against animals. The same goes for other habits of mind such as religion, drinking, and the sheer inability of humans to change their minds. And here Fluffy, the cat is controlling her innate instincts.

Yes, a lot of the factors I mentioned above - Max, instant feedback,  and the unspoken deal helped. But I am a student of complexity and I don't like simple answers for complex questions. There must numerous other and subtle factors influencing her behavior.

It dawned on me last month that missed a huge factor, namely Panopticon:

The panopticon is a type of institutional building and a system of control designed by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. The concept of the design is to allow all prisoners of an institution to be observed by a single security guard, without the inmates being able to tell whether they are being watched.

Yes, Jeremey Bentham's idea of panopticon changed the economics of prisons.  Most prisons including the design of the infamous Supermax Prisons in this country was influenced by panopticon.

The simple idea here is that there are more prisoners than guards. So one needs to create an illusion that guards are watching the prisons all the time. This, in turn, would force prisoners to behave. The prison buildings are designed to create that illusion.

 

It goes without saying that I would never treat Fluffy as a prisoner. It dawned on that the panopticon I created for Fluffy wasn't structural but oral. 

I would randomly call her name while I am working in the living room or while cooking in the kitchen or whatever else I am doing inside the house. These calls were never conscious nor regularly timed. I sporadically would call out her name and she has to come inside to show her face otherwise I would go to the patio. The sheer randomness of these calls created an illusion for her that she is being watched by me even though I am not anywhere near the patio. Maybe, this randomness also had a big influence on her honoring the deal we signed three years ago.

With little time and effort, now Fluffy can happily enjoy outdoors, the birds and squirrels are safe, and I am happy that she is safe away from the roads. It is as simple as that. There is no magic.  It just takes awareness, stepping outside of our self-centered life and seeing the world through their perspective.

Montaigne was the one who opened my eyes to the world of cats long before Fluffy came to my life.

Presumption is our natural and original disease. The most wretched and frail of all creatures is man, and withal the proudest. He feels and sees himself lodged here in the dirt and filth of the world, nailed and rivetted to the worst and deadest part of the universe, in the lowest story of the house, the most remote from the heavenly arch, with animals of the worst condition of the three; and yet in his imagination will be placing himself above the circle of the moon, and bringing the heavens under his feet. 'Tis by the same vanity of imagination that he equals himself to God, attributes to himself divine qualities, withdraws and separates himself from the crowd of other creatures, cuts out the shares of the animals, his fellows and companions, and distributes to them portions of faculties and force, as himself thinks fit. How does he know, by the strength of his understanding, the secret and internal motions of animals?—from what comparison betwixt them and us does he conclude the stupidity he attributes to them? When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me? We mutually divert one another with our play. If I have my hour to begin or to refuse, she also has hers. 

- An Apology of Raymond Sebond, Michel de Montaigne

Please meditate on those beautiful lines from Montaigne written around the 1560s. He is telling us that we don't know shit about the secret lives, emotions, and intelligence (plus, myriad of other things) of animals but yet we think they are stupid. So who is stupid here?