Halloween is a time when the woke movement could be employed to protect black cats. A lot has been said about the woke movement. My interpretation of the word “woke” (the past tense of the word “wake”) is that it means a person has woken up to the need to fight injustice and prejudice. That fight extends to people who suffer injustice because of the colour of the skin and because of their gender alignment.
It’s about fully accepting men who feel they are in the wrong body who are sure that they should have been born women and women who feel that they should be men. It is an acceptance that you can’t pigeonhole men and women into strictly defined boxes because gender is a spectrum from the alpha male to the feminine woman with many shades and colours in between.
The woke movement is about enlightenment and sensitivity towards others. But the “others” are always human beings. The woke movement itself is not woke. It is blinkered as it does not include companion animals. In fact, it should include all animals but for the time being I’ll stick to cats and dogs and focus on cats.
Why should the woke movement shun cats? Cats are regarded as family members in hundreds of millions of homes on the planet. They are brothers, sisters, babies, daughters, sons, lovers and partners to hundreds of millions of people. They are loved and adored and they are outsiders to the woke movement.
The reason why I’m discussing the woke movement in relation to cats today is because today is Halloween and Halloween is a time when black cats have been historically abused. Shelters sometimes don’t allow people to adopt black cats over the Halloween season in order to protect them from abusive individuals with black magic in mind.
There is a prejudice against black cats which is why they are left on the shelf at shelters. There is a prejudice against old cats for the same reason. There is a preference for kittens and young cats. People prefer white cats to black cats. You could create a chart of the coat types that are the most popular and the least popular. The boring tabby (the original cat coat type) is less popular than the non-black bicolour for instance. And there is a general prejudice against tortoiseshell cats in that some people believe that they have ‘catitude’ – a feisty/fiery and difficult attitude. People admire the big, glamorous Maine Coons and hate the dirty feral cat who was abandoned years earlier by an irresponsible owner.
People want to shoot the feral cat in some parts of the world and they do so with impunity. In those places, many crave living with an exotic animal like an F1 Savannah cat. This is all prejudice and anti-woke. The woke movement should extent to cats. It does not because cats are second class citizens. Actually, they aren’t citizens at all. To the authorities they are ‘just cats’. To millions they are so much more. Bring them into the woke movement please.
Speciesism is a form of prejudice that it anti-woke. This is preferring one species of animal over another. For example, hating cats but loving birds. Or hating cats and loving dogs. Often the hatred or dislike is born of ignorance and is manifest in abuse. This is all anti-woke human behaviour.
The woke movement insists, and rightly so, that we treat everyone equally and with respect, no matter what their skin colour. We need the same attitude towards domestic cats of all colours.
P.S. Obviously, many people like black cats. In general, they are liked less than other coat types.
SOME MORE ON BLACK CATS:
