Why Cats? Why Not Cats?

Remember when social media gleamed shiny and new and we wondered: Why cats?

Cute, cuddly creatures had their place, but cats ruled the show from the start. Google why and pages of articles pop up, with no clear consensus. The best bet sounds like a Zen koan: Why cats? Because other cats.

These days, as the news ages us in dog years, cat memes and videos need no explanation. We just know we need them. The Dagwood sandwich of political news is hard to digest. Adorable animals offer a quick antidote, a shot of dopamine to revive us. Why not cats?

All Julius Motal thought when he saw a Facebook post in July for a cat night at a Brooklyn bar was that it might be fun to photograph. “The event image was of a wide-eyed cat set against the universe,” he recalled. “I was enthralled.”

Mr. Motal, a staff photographer for the Bronx’s Riverdale Press, attended the affair, a fund-raiser for several cat organizations that was packed with cat people — and their cats. “From there,” he said, “I just rode the wave from one cat extravaganza to the next.”

A documentary project, “Cat People,” was born. It has taken him from that bar to the Algonquin Hotel’s annual cat fashion show to a performance of the Amazing Acro-Cats (a touring troupe of performing cats) to a quiet cat cafe and, most recently, to a cat party, sans cats; guests were encouraged to dress up like them instead.

He said his project “seeks to understand people who love their cats, to push beyond whatever preconceptions (non-cat) people might have.” Outfitting cats and parading them in public, two things cats detest, might not seem like the behavior of true cat lovers, after all. But in this cultural moment, we get it. We read the news.

Credit:  Evelyn Nieves