Cats: 6 Degrees of Separation

Cats: 6 Degrees of Separation is a bit of crude cat-centric philosophy….but I believe there is some value in writing about it, particularly in these difficult times of world dysfunctionality.

As I said in an earlier post, I believe everything that we do is connected. If all of us are connected then our cats are connected because what our cats do depends to a large extent on what we do. The Internet age, and particularly the growth in social media sites, has made the 6 degrees of separation theory even more meaningful and understandable.

The 6 degrees theory says is that all of us, on the planet, are connected by a maximum of 6 intermediary people. This is a serious theory that appears to be true.

This post uses the principle upon which the 6 degrees is based: we are all connected and quite closely.

Individual Connections

With internet social media, the theory of 6 degrees of separation results in a much more direct connection between what we do and all cats. Here is a possible 6 degrees of separation chart concerning cats and PoC. It is only an example….

What I am saying here is that when Ruth, for example, writes an article and creates a poster, it is spread out to social media websites. It gets passed around the internet and the poster ends up being seen by, hopefully, one person who acts upon it.

That person may be once removed from PoC or ten persons removed or more. I am using the general principle that our actions are connected to unknown individuals. Ruth’s posters are a good example but there are many other contributors to PoC whose work, I hope, will have changed someone’s behavior somewhere in relation to their cat.

Also, PoC is just an example. There are many other websites that support cat welfare. There is also a general connection – all cats are part of a whole….

General Connection

Along similar lines, I believe that the actions of anyone, anywhere affects all cats in general anywhere and/or individual cats as well.

My theory is partly based on the idea that all of us have a duty to try and improve the world. The end objective is greater contentment for the whole. This applies to all living creatures who have emotions and feelings. As humans manage the planet it is in the collective hands of people to create greater contentment amongst all living creatures who have emotions.

Selecting cats; if “contentment” were measurable, you could measure the sum total of contentment of all the world’s cats. We can’t measure it, but it must exist.

If I make my cat, Charlie, happier, today, that increases the sum total of contentment in the world of cats by a very, very small amount as Charlie is one cat amongst an estimated 500 million in the world. However, I have made a contribution to improving the sum total of cat contentment for that moment.

This brings me to a Gandhi saying, the exact words, of which, I have forgotten. The gist of it is this: it is worthwhile doing a very, very small thing for the good because if everyone follows that idea the world would be improved substantially. I realize that it won’t happen because the world pulls in different directions all the time, tearing itself apart, but we have to be guided by  principles that lead to greater contentment for all.

If a person does something that has no impact on a cat then nothing changes. As change for the better is required in the cat world, doing nothing to improve it is a negative. That is, doing nothing has a negative impact, in the future, on world cat contentment. So even when there is no direct impact from our actions it does have negative connotations on cat contentment.

Conclusion

We are all connected. On an idealistic level, we have a duty to improve the whole and are able to achieve this by improving the bit that we can.