Your cat spends their days denouncing capitalism, systemic domination and the symbolic violence of the modern world. Fair enough, so far. The problem is they’re making this speech with a glass of champagne in paw, from the velvet sofa of a patron funding their short film about working-class suffering.
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.
Now, they invite them onto their podcast to gather their testimony, document their trauma and deconstruct the power dynamics between cats and pests.
They haven’t solved anything.
But they’ve gained 300 subscribers on Patreon.
2. They explain that cars are immoral… from inside a Porsche Cayenne
Your cat despises the motor car, motorised individualism and the consumerist logic destroying the planet.
Then they hop, without hesitation, into their patron’s SUV, pointing out that one shouldn’t confuse bourgeois comfort with ideological compromise.
You’re not convinced.
Neither are they, really, but the heated seats help a lot.
3. They call their naps “a rejection of the pressure to perform”
Your cat sleeps 16 hours a day, produces nothing, tidies nothing and contributes to nothing beyond the gradual flattening of your cushions.
But dare mention laziness, and they’ll correct you immediately: what they practise is a form of resistance to neoliberal productivism.
You are, therefore, living with a profoundly useless animal who is, in theory, extremely well-read.
4. They hate billionaires, except the one funding their film
To your cat, the accumulation of capital is obscene.
Wealth is indecent.
The elites must be fought.
Except, of course, that 62-year-old Milanese producer who’s advanced them £80,000 for a silent short film about the loneliness of hedgehogs facing gentrification.
There, oddly enough, the struggle can wait until Monday.
5. They hate the rich, but mostly the ones who don’t invite them
Your cat loves denouncing privilege.
But they take it very badly indeed if a private party, an opening night or an activist dinner with a vegan buffet happens without them.
It’s not really the social injustice that wounds them.
It’s not being on the list.
How do you handle a radical chic cat?
Make them live real degrowth
Turn off the heating.
Not “turn it down by one degree”, no.
Turn it all off.
Once the lounge hits -2°C, they might just stop quoting Gramsci in a dressing gown and rediscover the virtues of moderate social democracy.
Swap their activist coffee for motorway service station coffee
Your cat drinks a £5 fair-trade espresso while talking about social justice.
Serve them a lukewarm vending-machine coffee instead, tasting of plastic and despair.
If they wince, it turns out the revolution had a few quality standards after all.
Confront them with 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 post-lunch naps.
The spectacle alone should be enough to shut them up. Or make you laugh a great deal.
Conclusion
You wanted to test the sincerity of their convictions.
So you enrolled them in an anti-capitalist commune in the middle of nowhere, convinced they’d finally find the consistency they preach all day long.
They left after six hours.
Apparently, “self-management” loses much of its charm the moment it involves doing the washing-up, chopping wood, or sharing a bathroom with people who genuinely smell of degrowth.
What to Do If My Cat Is a Leftie? and its sequels will introduce you to other equally exhausting felines: regionalist cats, bourgeois cats, activist cats, conspiracy-theorist cats, or simply insufferable ones with a tote bag.
