Consuming Cats

The northeast monsoon lashed Bangalore one night in October 2018. Shards of lightning lit up rooftops and a grid of roads in a gated community glistened in the southeastern part of the city. On a driveway somewhere in that grid lay a tiny furry body, curled up. Water flowed in rivulets all around it. Its eyes were shut tight. A woman, stepping out of her house, saw it and called for help. Susana, excellent with and experienced in rescuing and caring for animals, responded immediately and took the tiny being under her wing. It was a kitten, not even two days old.

A day later she, already overwhelmed with the 12 rescued cats she was fostering, asked if anyone was willing to nurse the kitten under her tutelage. I raised my hand. While I had two rescued cats at home, I had no experience with such a tiny one. Its sleeping curled-up grey tabby body fit in the palm of my hand, light as a feather. Its eyes were still closed and ears folded down—an embodiment of fragility. I would need to take over as its mommy, playing proxy for (almost) all the things its mommy would do, Susana warned. From warming up the special kitten formula, to teaching—stimulating—the little one to pee and poop, to keeping it warm at all times. Hypothermia is fatal for such a small kitten, she said.

My daughter became my partner, and we took turns waking up at nights to feed “Zorro,” exhort him to pass motion, then clean his poop and pee, weigh him on a kitchen countertop scale to make sure he was growing, wrap him up snugly, and put him back to bed. He consumed our world, and we consumed every moment of his life. We applauded when he opened his eyes on schedule on day 10, and again as he hit each successive milestone. Like proud parents we lapped up every new adventure of his. Our appetite for observing him was insatiable. We watched a helpless ball of fur turn into an independent, powerful, keen-nosed, sharp-eyed, alert-eared, athletic, nimble, curious, and efficient predator.

Yes, predator. No matter how cute a kitten, its predatory instinct is never far beneath its furry exterior. They may have domesticated themselves, but they are far from tame. Even as I write this, Zorro—now the biggest cat in the house at all of 6.5kg—lolls beside me, his ears alert for every little sound. He commands attention when he wants it, and showers affection only on his terms.

DNA analysis reveals that one subspecies of wildcat, the Middle Eastern wildcat (F. silverstris lybica),¹ is the ancestor of all domestic cats. Over 10,000 years ago, humans began to settle in the Fertile Crescent (modern day Syria, Israel, Palestine, Iraq), and agriculture became a way of life. It is around this time that the Middle Eastern wildcat, sensing easy pickings and scraps, began cohabiting human settlements.

Experts do not think that humans actively domesticated the wildcat,² but the proximal habitation definitely led to the birth of the domestic cat. As agriculture spread out from the Fertile Crescent to the rest of the world, so did cats. It was likely the Egyptians—whose pantheon included the goddess Bastet—who started actively breeding cats and using them in ritual burials.

Experts think that it is a cat’s facial features that was conducive to forging a bond with humans. Large eyes and a high round forehead elicit the nurturing quality in humans, and thus little kittens made their way into our home, hearts, and increasingly, wallets. But while domestic cats have lived alongside humans for 10 millennia, they never did develop a dependence on us like domesticated dogs and other livestock did.

Cats—obligate carnivores—are perfectly capable of hunting for food on their own, and equally happy eating meat out of a bowl.

Cat ownership (if you can call it that, for every “cat owner” always wonders who the one being owned is) in India alone has tripled in the last decade to more than 3 million, and is slated to be close to 5 million by 2026.³ There are about 50 million domestic cats in the US, by comparison (and 157 million dogs).

Our appetite for cats (and dogs) fuels a voracious industry. If dogs and cats were their own nation, they would be the world’s fifth largest consumer of meat. Many pet owners hanker for human-grade food for their pets. This means some of the choicest cuts of meat go into gourmet pet food, adding to the pressure of feeding billions of humans. Cattle farms and poultry farms are some of the prime drivers of deforestation and carbon emissions. What is more sinister is that much of the pet food industry now depends upon fisheries “bycatch.”

Early one November morning in 2019, I walked along a pier in Tamil Nadu, and watched as commercial trawlers unloaded their catch for the day. Men with their chequered lungis—hitched up above their knees and tied at the waist—scuttled back and forth between the vessels and a long, low, open shed. The shed stretched parallel to the Indian Ocean shoreline for about 200 metres. Under its tin roof rose hundreds of five foot high mounds of small, discarded fish in rows. As I stopped to take in this sight, more barrels of slimy, slippery fish were unloaded to make new mounds. Other lesser piles attracted my attention, and I sauntered over to see guitarfish, an endangered species, unceremoniously piled. It was all bycatch.

Imagine a large net drawn across the Serengeti, hoovering up all manner of creatures in a quest for a few species. Those other unwanted species caught up in the indiscriminate trawl are what is called “bycatch.” Bottom trawling is exactly that, except it is on the ocean bed. While earlier, accidental bycatch was deemed unfortunate and undesirable, the lucrative consumption of bycatch by the growing pet food industry means that now bycatch is fuelling the fisheries. This rings a death knell for many key endangered species: sharks, loggerhead and leatherback turtles, and even dolphins often fall prey to bottom trawling and longline fishing intended for tuna. Moreover, bottom trawling diminishes the stock of juvenile fish to a disastrous degree.

As of 2022, cat food constituted almost one-third of the global pet-food market, having grown by a whopping 34 per cent between 2017 and 2021.⁴

Our feline-love contributing to such destruction puts me in a dilemma every time I lay out food for my three rescues—Shyn, Shadow, and Zorro. Each one has a preference for a certain brand of canned food. They won’t touch another brand, or fresh meat. Every morning and evening, I am torn between my concern for their well-being and the fact that my actions contribute to over-consuming the oceans’ limited bounties.

Shyn, Shadow, and Zorro are strictly indoor cats. This also has an effect on the immediate environment, albeit a positive one. According to research conducted in Australia,⁵ one domestic cat allowed to roam consumes about 186 animals of various genera annually. A feral cat, in comparison, kills almost four times as many animals. Feral cats, being predators, are one of the prime reasons for the decline in biodiversity in many countries. In Australia, they have now been declared the most invasive of species, killing over two billion animals every year. The country has “declared war” on them, which includes allowing hunters to shoot feral cats.

Keeping domestic cats strictly indoors, adopting a potentially feral cat (as Zorro could have become), and restricting them to the indoors helps save numerous species that belong in the urban and suburban wilderness around us.

Unlike dog breeds which vary widely in looks, sizes, temperaments and abilities, cat breeds differ mostly in coats. When dogs were domesticated, they were chosen for their ability to learn and enhance skills. But cats, as any owner will attest to, resist being taught, or obeying or answering to anyone. Thus, they were never bred selectively. Experts believe that whatever variation we see in cats today is the result of some modern breeds that grew out of efforts in the British Isles in the 19th century. Today, only about 60 breeds of domestic cat are officially recognised, in comparison to about 360 breeds of dogs.

Cat breeders, keenly aware of a small but growing market for pedigreed cats in India are cashing in. There is, however, a dark side to breeding pedigreed cats. Many of them operate illegally, and at great cost to the felines who are often malnourished, sick, severely in-bred, and stashed away in tiny filthy cages.

An extreme example of perverse breeding driven by demand is the Scottish Fold cat. Selected for a genetic mutation that causes development of bones and cartilages throughout its body to be affected, this ultra-friendly cat with its forward-folded ears faces painfully severe complications early in its life. While a ban on breeding these cats is in force in a few countries, demand is rife in others. Despite warnings from the Governing Council Of the Cat Fancy (GCCF)—“strongly advise members of the public not to try to acquire cats of this breed”—Fold kittens are in great demand. That a mega celebrity like Taylor Swift owns two of them and parades them relentlessly does not help.

Cats have in yet another way firmly entrenched themselves into the rapacious world of social media influencers. Not human, but feline influencers. One @princesshoneybellex, queen ginger of TikTok, has hundreds of thousands of followers, her own merch, and recipes. Moreover, she is an income stream for her caregiver, netting a cool $74,000 in 2023, which is more than the average salary in the United States. But @princesshoneybellex works hard for the money. She simpers and smirks in knitted beanies and heart-shaped sunglasses, seated in front of baked goodies or licking cat treats. Such cats rake in thousands of dollars for simply posing with and “endorsing” various pet products.

Adopted from a kennel, the Siamese and tabby mix @nala_cat is the richest cat in the world. With $100 million and counting to her name, she has 4.5 million followers and her own food brand, @lovenalaco (the brand has its own nearly 150,000 followers). The most recent post, at the time of this writing, showed Nala on her back, feet in the air, her slightly crossed eyes half closed, sleepily demanding a tummy rub.

A whopping 15 percent of the internet is driven by cats, as per 2015 numbers.⁶ The putative rationale behind this is that looking at cute things like furry kittens relaxes the viewer. So Nala’s tribe is growing. As are the bank accounts of cat owners. There are now several “How to be a pet influencer” videos on YouTube, themselves making money for their creators. Whether a plebeian or an aristocrat, the cat resides supreme as an internet meme phenomenon.

In the psyche of the world, the wild feline represents power and prestige: the leaping puma that embodies the logo of the athletic apparel brand, and the roaring jaguar that fronts the luxury line of automobiles. Britannia’s largest brand of biscuits in India is named for its National Animal—the Tiger. Even if one cannot read the name, the graphic is instantly recognisable, depicting fun and energy, designed to entice children.

Something I read the other day, though, took “monetizing cats” to another level: cat poop in exchange for money. There are businesses which collect healthy cat poop to transplant into cats with GI issues (much like human faecal transplants). Of course, the digestive tract of the donating feline has to be of impeccable robustness. If one owns such a feline, the cat could more than pay for itself, and may even make its owners a considerable pile of cash, merely by pooping.

So fascinating is the feline form that consumer products have mimicked its working. Inspired by the mind-blowing ability of the cat to retract its claws, cat thumbtacks have bio-mimicked them to great profit for its inventors. Reflectors on the roads have borrowed from the “eye shine” of feline eyes—the film known as tapetum lucidum that reflects light shone on it. And cats’ bristly tongues are inspiring smarter hairbrushes.

The feline body—big or small—is a ridiculously good adaptation for its world. Its eyesight, olfactory senses, its sense of balance, the power in its legs to leap high and land softly, its stealth, its curiosity, its calmness in chaos, and its sheer unwillingness to be leashed is its allure. And yet, even the biggest and wildest of cats were no match for the appetite of humans.

If you travel by road from Agra to Delhi, large swathes of land on either side of the highway is agrarian and dotted with hamlets. Occasionally, you see small swathes of grasses over six feet high and low rising hilly outcrops. French physician Francois Bernier’s words, describing this region in the 1600s, “In the neighbourhoods of Agra and Delhi … there is a large quantity of uncultivated land, covered either with copse wood or grasses …,” come to mind.⁷ If you hold that image over that two-hour road trip, it is not hard to imagine what Akbar may have seen on the numerous trips he and other Mughal emperors made between Agra and Delhi.

The only thing missing would be the lions.

During the time of the Mughals, and when the British East India Company came to our shores, lions—too plentiful to count—roamed all over north India. Hunts for lions were restricted by law to royalty alone (Bernier even mentions that the lands between Agra and Delhi were guarded fiercely due to the abundance of predators that were prized game).

Historical accounts and several Mughal miniature paintings show Akbar, Jehangir, and Shahjahan hunting in the vicinity of what is today Delhi’s Palam airport and Jaipur’s airport at Sanganer. Those paintings give us a sense of what India’s landscape might have looked like when these big cats and their prey were plentiful. Tigers, more reclusive and in forests, are not mentioned much in Mughal records, but there are a few paintings of tiger-hunts too. The population of striped and rosetted predators numbered in the hundreds of thousands when the Raj established itself in India.

And then came the massacre.

The Raj was interested in profiting from its colonies, and that meant clearing vast tracts of forests and land for agriculture, railways, and roads. Tigers, ferocious and dangerous, were declared as vermin, and bounties announced for hunting them down. In just 50 years around the turn of the twentieth century, it is estimated that over 80,000 tigers and 150,000 leopards were killed.⁸ Around 1900, between 25-30,000 tigers remained. The British continued to kill them in the name of development, and “shikar” trips were sought after. These hunts were even advertised in the National Geographic Magazine well into the 1960s and 70s.

Only a tenth of tigers remain today, and lions—now a meagre 400—are restricted to a tiny corner of Gujarat.

To see a big cat in its element in the wild is the ultimate pay off for an eco-tourist. People descend upon countries home to wild big cats to ogle and to sate their desire to be in proximity to these apex predators. Winters and dry summers in the tropics are big-cat tourism time.

In the northernmost district of India, 4,500 metres above sea level, lofty mountain peaks shrouded in new snow rise in a jagged row from arid valleys. Human inhabitation here is sparse compared to the rest of India—under five people to a square kilometre. Under these rugged white mountains stands what looks like a city parking lot, with nearly a hundred white Toyota Innovas. Beyond the parked cars, in a semi-circle below the mountains, is a crowd of people bundled and hooded in designer outdoor wear from brands like Patagonia and North Face.

Our group joins this bunch. In front of us, like a machine gun battery, is an arc of two score or more Manfrotto tripods with cameras mounted on each, and as many deck chairs. Everyone is milling around, some peeping through scopes that cost as much as a small hatchback, some shooting with massive 800mm and 1200mm zoom lenses attached to the latest Sony, Nikon or Canon mirrorless full-frame cameras, still others plying those shooting and peering with piping ginger-lemon tea and hot chocolate. Tins of freshly baked biscuits are making the rounds in the still frigid, end-of-winter rarified air.

The scene has the feel of a high-end tailgating party on the highest plateau of India, Ladakh. About 300 metres off, on the far side of a richly mottled rock-and-lichen mountain, is the bloody carcass of an ibex. Through our scopes, we see two yearling snow leopard cubs lounging—bellies full—their huge front paws hanging off the rocks. The mother is nowhere to be seen. A hush falls over the throng as we take the scene in, before excited commentary ensues from those glued to the scopes. The cats’ every move is observed, commented upon, and analysed in thrilled half whispers. The agony of altitude sickness is forgotten. The cubs are doing nothing—but they are there, to be gawked at, and that is what everyone is here for at considerable cost and great physical discomfort: an up-close sight of feline majesty.

Then the mother, with a similarly bulging tummy, ambles out from behind a rock. A feral Tibetan mastiff that was fast asleep on a nearby overhang begins to bark its head off. The mama snow leopard glides, with casual unconcern, to the carcass and tears at the flesh, her maw dripping blood.

We are in the company of the Ghost Of The Mountains—not one, not two, but three at once. The rarity and the sheer luck of this “sighting” is not lost on anyone. This is what they have braved the April cold for, from the United States, Europe, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, and Hyderabad.

Snow leopard tourism was once the purview of the intrepid, of those brave enough to make it to the -30 degree Celsius weather in Ladakh to stay in homestays that had no heating, no toilets, and no running hot water. There was nothing else; the rest of Ladakh used to be closed for business, October through April.

Things have changed over the last few years. A steadily enriched middle class has begun to consume travel extensively, and big-cat tourism is a prime item on the menu. While tiger reserves still grab the bulk of eco-tourists, the lesser explored Ladakh is becoming increasingly popular. Businesses in Leh now stay open year-round, buoying the local economy.

As with every surge there is an ebb, so also is the case with these fragile ecosystems that are the home of the snow leopard. As economies boom and GDPs grow and fuel this appetite for big-cat tourism, it also feeds the steadily rising mercury. Average winter temperatures in Ladakh⁹ (risen one degree Celsius since the 1970s) threatens to destroy the fragile trans-Himalayan ecosystem. Glaciers are fast retreating, causing wetlands to dry up and threatening water security for both wildlife and humans.

Even as I write this in the summer of 2024, there is news coming in of ravenous fires gulping the world’s largest wetlands: the Pantanal in South America. Earlier wildfires in 2020 ravaged these wetlands, affecting nearly half the caiman-hunting jaguars (45 percent) which are the main draw for Pantanal tourism.

The world over, national parks have come to signify fortresses of wilderness—strongholds of conservation—at the cost of ousted Indigenous people whose home it has been for eons. The forests are ground zero: swanky resorts thrive here and digital-detox-craving urbanites come to unwind from their hectic lives, fuelling the world economy and equally, exacerbating the climate crisis. This is also where the rug has been pulled from under the feet of millions for whom these forests are home. Further, they are banned from entering forests to collect produce like honey, leaves, fruit, flowers—livelihood they have depended upon for centuries.

But our humongous appetite for growth (which allows us fatter wallets) is threatening the forests themselves too. Mining interests as well as—ironically—“green energy” needs are pressing in, squeezing the precious, shrinking habitats from all directions. Building of hydroelectric dams all over Asia threaten a fifth of the remaining wild tiger population, for example. Other misguided efforts like linking the rivers of Ken and Betwa threatens to submerge a part of the Panna Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh (central India). The list goes on.

The economy that allows us to consume cats so voraciously in turn consumes the very sustenance of these cats, and our own survival. Big cats are expected to be “on tap” over weekends for consumers. “Thumbs-up” and “heart” adulation on social media is the pay off, when ultra-close-up photographs of tigers and leopards and jaguars are posted. Exhortations to bend the rules and go off-road for better “angles” are common. As jeeps colonise the best spots, the feline often finds herself cornered or hemmed in, her well-being a distant consideration, if at all.

Consumption of big cats invades our living rooms as well, with TV channels like National Geographic, Animal Planet and Discovery piping big-cat diaries into our lives. These programs, in their intensity and occasional sensationalism, are designed to ignite empathy or kindle excitement, feelings that progress to an addiction to and investment in them.

If the safari experience has become a commodity with purchasing power driving demand, the felines themselves have been reduced to commodities—no longer seen as charismatic, wild-roaming beasts, but prized for their coveted body parts.

Luxury consumer demand for tiger skins, teeth, claws, meat, and bones is rife in many of the major economies of the world. To satisfy this demand, tigers are farmed; there are more than twice the number of farmed tigers in the world¹⁰ (China alone has over 5000) than tigers in the wild. That the consumer’s appetite for everything tiger knows few bounds is exemplified by the fact that the Shenyang Zoo in China produces “tiger-bone wine”. This trade is not a localised phenomenon; several international (read: Western) financial institutions invest in companies whose businesses include trade in tiger products. Even more sinister is that the luxe consumer worldwide prefers parts from wild cats over farmed ones.

In an odd way then, we are harnessing the feline to further our own excesses. The cat is employed, fetishized, and objectified, unbeknownst to it, in our greed to be more, have more, do more. The irony lies in our language. The domestic cat—satiated and content, slightly supercilious and unmindful of any criticism, has come to represent a rich, influential, greedy celebrity or businessman—the “Fat Cat,” epitome of capitalism.

But the idiom is unfair to the feline (as most idioms and metaphors in our language are). What John Valliant says in The Tiger: A True Story Of Vengeance and Survival, is pertinent here: “And this is precisely where the tension lies: Panthera tigris and Homo sapiens are actually very much alike, and we are drawn to many of the same things, if for slightly different reasons. Both of us demand large territories; both of us have prodigious appetites for meat; both of us require control over our living space and are prepared to defend it, and both of us have an enormous sense of entitlement to the resources around us. If a tiger can poach on another’s territory, it probably will, and so, of course, will we. A key difference, however, is that tigers only take what they need.”

It is 4pm, time for me to feed my three cats. As if on cue, they descend to intertwine themselves around my feet. It is as if an internal alarm clock went off inside them. As I spoon the contents of their food into their bowls, I glance at the ingredients list. It starts with “tuna by-product” …

My three cats consume a small portion each and walk away, sated. They love the food, but they have taken only what they need.

John Valliant is spot on.

A feline, while being the engine of profits, could never itself be a capitalist.