The Captain’s Log entry: Week of 20 July, the year of our Lord 2025
Brainwashed by cuteness - why babies and cats are so squeezable
Another Tuesday getting by on our wits, good luck and our charming, cute personalities…at least in Binky, Snuggles and Peanuts’ cases.
We kinda of talked about this in our last episode…
Before we get into it, a few things!!
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It’s still kitten season, which we talked about in Season 1’s Cats vs Cupid episode. Shelters are overflowing with abandoned or rescued kitties and we want to shout out to all the community cat caregivers, TNR leaders and foster parents out there showing kindness to these little living gods. As always, please adopt, don’t shop - and foster a kitty if you can!
We are also pleased to spotlight our friends, The Cat Museum of NYC! Co-founded by Jenny Pierson, Reynard Loki and Susan Steshko, The Cat Museum of New York City is a proposed institution dedicated to supporting cats and the humans who care for them, primarily through art exhibits. Please be sure to check out their webpage, subscribe to their mailing list and donate to help them break ground! I mean - NYC doesn’t yet have a Cat Museum?! C’mon New Yorkers!
So…what did you think of the last episode?
AT OUR LAST PORT OF DISEMBARKATION
In which the editorial director of this newsletter, Captain Kitty reports on our past destinations.
On our last leg of this cruise across history and cultures, we stopped over to Copenhagen to consult with Brazilian multidisciplinary artist Natalia Garcez, whose paintings of grumpy cats were first flagged to us by our dear friend Paulette Erato, founder of Latinas in Podcasting and creator and host of La Vida Más Chévere (LVMC). (Paulette featured yours truly as a guest a few seasons ago and is on hiatus - we love the LVMC podcast and encourage y’all to explore the archive to learn from many amazing child-free women across the Latin American diaspora.)
Natalia’s viral painting of the family of cats, inspired by her two kitties, led us into a fun conversation about why, and how, grumpy cats get away with it. The answer? Cuteness, obviously. They can literally get away with murder - and we love them for it!
I - Captain Kitty, a.k.a. Amanda B. - first became aware of the power of cuteness in my developmental psychology course, via which I was exposed to the concept of supernormal features, many of which are encompassed in the kinden, or child / baby schema. From an evolutionary standpoint, it’s truly fascinating to think about babies. Compared to, say, cats, the human gestation period is relatively long - a time during which the fetus’ head grows to a size that hits the limit of what can reasonably be squeezed and expelled intact through our specific species’ port of exit - the vagina. When born, babies enter the world entirely dependent on us, - screaming and demanding and mostly a survival liability until the age of, say, 9 when apparently they were responsible for the industry part of the revolution.
So…I guess they’d better be cute? At least to their primary caregiver/s.
(Which - yes, of course they are! We don’t hate babies, we promise. In fact, Captain Kitty is - surprise surprise - a big fan of kids. But we have seen both babies and cats. What can we say?)
Okay, okay. In all seriousness, it’s obvious that there’s something about the drive to reproduce that all living species possess. But what’s interesting is how, for humans, beyond in infants - cuteness has become so obsessively pursued in these times. I’d say the industries commercializing some variation of cute or youth are in the trillions of dollars.
Disney alone…
And this is what prompted me to consult with YouTube artist Ergojosh, a.k.a. Joshua Stephens, whose viral video deconstructing the giant eyes as demonstrated in their 1989 hit, “The Little Mermaid” starring redheaded main pixie dream fishgirl Ariel, whose eyes took up nearly ⅓ of her face, dwarfing her dainty nose and rosebud mouth. Not natural for humans, but slightly closer to the proportions of our favorite cute mascots. How did you find his take on why the cute features were so prominent for women in Disney animations?
With the help of Catnip Magazine publisher Anja Charbonneau, we continued exploring the other traits of kindenschema that we here at S.S. 6 Degrees of Cats think pushes cats to first place on the cuteness awards. And what made them so obviously appealing to feature in both a magazine, as well as a dedicated Cat Oracle deck! It was fun reminiscing on the ur-cat magazine - Cat Fancy - and I encourage y’all to get your own deck to find out who, exactly, artist Stephen Eichorn chose to depict the Cat Lady.
So - what do YOU think? Is the average cat cuter than the average baby (again, knowing that YOU, wonderful 6 Degrees of Cats community, are exceptional as are your babies!)? And for this title, who wins what? Let us know in the comments or write us back, we want to know!
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Next episode: coming TUESDAY 7/29! Get ready to observe the magic of the cat eye!
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Hard to believe we are nearly halfway through Season 3 - are you loving it so far? We hope that you and your kitties are holding the center. We’re super excited for the next episode, please keep tuning in and sharing the 6 Degrees of Cats love with your feline-loving friends, family and former foes (because they’ll be instant pals once y’all bond over kitties!)
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Captain Kitty, Binky, Snuggles and Peanut