Your cat spends their days denouncing capitalism, systemic domination and the symbolic violence of the modern world. Fine so far. The problem is they deliver this speech with a glass of champagne in paw, from the velvet couch of a patron bankrolling their short film about the suffering of the working class.
It might be time to accept the obvious: your cat is radical chic.
The 5 Signs Your Cat Is Radical Chic
1. They No Longer Hunt Mice, They Hand Them a Microphone
Your cat used to kill rodents.
These days they invite them onto their podcast to hear their stories, document their trauma and deconstruct the power dynamics between cats and pests.
They haven’t solved anything.
But they’ve picked up 300 Patreon subscribers.
2. They Explain That Cars Are Immoral… from Inside a Porsche Cayenne
Your cat despises cars, motorised individualism and the consumerist logic destroying the planet.
Then they hop straight into their patron’s SUV without blinking, explaining that you shouldn’t confuse bourgeois comfort with ideological compromise.
You’re not convinced.
Neither are they, honestly, but the heated seats help a lot.
3. They Call Their Naps “Stepping Outside the Performance Mandate”
Your cat sleeps 16 hours a day, produces nothing, tidies nothing and contributes to nothing beyond the gradual flattening of your cushions.
But if you dare call it laziness, they correct you immediately: what they’re practising is a form of resistance against neoliberal productivism.
So you’re living with a deeply useless animal who is, in theory, extremely principled.
4. They Hate Billionaires, Except the One Funding Their Film
To your cat, wealth accumulation is obscene.
Riches are indecent.
The elites must be fought.
Except, of course, for that 62 year old Milanese producer who’s fronting $120,000 for a silent short film about hedgehog loneliness in the face of gentrification.
In that case, oddly enough, the struggle can wait until Monday.
5. They Hate the Rich, Especially the Ones Who Don’t Invite Them
Your cat loves calling out privilege.
But they can’t stand it when a private party, an exhibition opening or an activist dinner with a vegan buffet happens without them.
It’s not really social injustice that stings.
It’s not being on the list.
How Do You React to a Radical Chic Cat?
Give Them the Real Degrowth Experience
Cut the heating.
Not “turn it down a degree,” no.
Cut it off entirely.
Once the lounge room hits minus two, they might just stop quoting Gramsci in a dressing gown and rediscover the merits of moderate social democracy.
Swap Their Activist Coffee for a Servo Coffee
Your cat drinks a $9 fair trade espresso while talking social justice.
Serve them a lukewarm servo coffee instead, tasting of plastic and despair.
If they wince, then the revolution had standards after all.
Introduce Them to Someone Who Actually Works
Invite a fisherman, a roofer, or anyone who’s been up since 4:30am for the past thirty years.
Then let your cat calmly explain class struggle to them between two food comas.
The spectacle alone should shut them up. Or give you a good laugh.
Conclusion
You wanted to test the sincerity of their convictions.
So you signed them up at an anti-capitalist commune in the middle of nowhere, convinced they’d finally find the consistency they preach about all day long.
They left after six hours.
Apparently “self-management” loses a lot of its charm the moment it involves doing the dishes, chopping wood or sharing a bathroom with people who genuinely smell like degrowth.
What to Do If My Cat Is a Democrat? and its sequels will introduce you to other equally exhausting cats, whether regionalist, wealthy, activist, conspiracy theorist or just insufferable with a tote bag.
