Heyo, so heres a section of my diss my supervisor told me 2 take out. I think it’s acc more relevant to my practice than my diss so i shall pop it here if u wanna read. This stream of thought ties into what i’m thinking about in terms of my paintings @ the moment. Consumption mmmm:::
“Generally speaking one does eat their companion animals (nor get eaten by them)” (Donna Haraway, The companion species manifesto)- The idea of dying alone and then being devoured by your pets is something relevant to discussions of Crazy Cat Ladies: not only because they would be prime candidates for dying alone and not being found for a period of time. Also because of the idea that because cats sit on the wild/tame boundary they are domestic up until a point and that upon demise from the perspective of the cats, the Lady becomes no longer subject, but object in which to be consumed. The CCL becomes the keystone to the construction of this symbiosis, as if it’s her constant interactions and cat related practices that allows the mutual relationship to continue, and if she were absent everything would crumble into complete evolutionary wildness. It is not just an absence of food that this culminates in. One Quora user cites the soft tissue of the face, the cheeks, lips and nose, to be the first to be eaten, as these are the parts that the cat would first use to awaken the sleeping owner, but these are also intimate and identity forming parts of the body. The face is recognisable as both sensitive and identity forming, compared to hands, which they would experience a multitude of in terms of petting or levering food down for them to eat. It’s almost as if the cats themselves require this intimacy, indulging in the sensitive parts. It could be considered that the giving of the body after death is the ultimate form of companionship, the physical amalgamation of cat and lady. We are talking here potentially about parasitosis and proximity, as the cats transform from parasitic to scavenger. Parasitic stranger.
