Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. Time to
Speaker 2: go into the vault for an older episode of the show.
Speaker 2: This one originally published October nineteenth, twenty twenty three, and
Speaker 2: it is about the strange and supernatural cats of Japanese tradition.
Speaker 1: All right, let's dive right in.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 2: My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: And it is October on Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 2: which means the Uncanny Pods continue. And today we're back
Speaker 2: with part two in a series we started on Tuesday
Speaker 2: about the monster cats of Japanese legend the cat yo kai.
Speaker 2: So brief of what we talked about last time. We
Speaker 2: covered a bit about the general role of cats in
Speaker 2: Japanese history in Japanese culture, and then we discussed a
Speaker 2: couple of famous cat yokai altered cats in monster form,
Speaker 2: including the neko mata, which may be a sort of
Speaker 2: giant monster cat or general large predator of the mountain forests,
Speaker 2: or maybe a cat that reaches a certain age, like
Speaker 2: a domestic house cat that reaches a certain age, maybe
Speaker 2: the age of one hundred, and then transforms into a monster.
Speaker 2: We also talked about the bakean eko, a sort of
Speaker 2: a moral shape shifting cat that may play pranks, may
Speaker 2: drink blood, may exact deadly revenge, etc. Does that about
Speaker 2: cover it.
Speaker 1: Rob, Yeah, yeah, pretty much. And an important thing to
Speaker 1: keep in mind, this is something we were talking about
Speaker 1: off mic before we came in here, is that there's
Speaker 1: a certain amount of overlap between these different classifications. I mean,
Speaker 1: more generally, as we've often discussed with folklore and legends
Speaker 1: and mythology and even religion, that there's not often like
Speaker 1: a strong canonizing, codifying force that is coming in and
Speaker 1: saying like, Okay, this is this creature and this is
Speaker 1: this other creature. You know, things shift over time, ideas merge,
Speaker 1: ideas influence one another, And I mean really, if you
Speaker 1: want to look outside of folklore and mythology and legend
Speaker 1: to find examples of this, I mean look no further
Speaker 1: than say like comic book characters, where like a character
Speaker 1: like Lex Luthor or the Riddler you know, have changed
Speaker 1: multiple times over the years to reflect different ideas in
Speaker 1: popular culture, with like Lex Luthor becoming less of a
Speaker 1: mad scientist in a mecha suit and becoming like a
Speaker 1: corporate businessman and so forth. The Riddler suddenly is the
Speaker 1: Zodiac Killer in recent films, you know that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Uh huh. I think that's a great comparison. But even
Speaker 2: in that case, at least, the things you're talking about
Speaker 2: are fixed media documents like you know, comic books and films,
Speaker 2: which continue to exist in a fixed form. When something
Speaker 2: is sort of oral legend and part of a culture,
Speaker 2: there's almost a limitless kind of free flow of the
Speaker 2: boundaries of the concept.
Speaker 1: Right right, there's no like central publication that is to
Speaker 1: some extent controlling the form. And you can argue just
Speaker 1: how much even something like The Riddler is controlled by it,
Speaker 1: say DC comics, because ultimately have fan fiction, fan art,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But yeah, outside of that, you know, we're
Speaker 1: dealing with situations where things are just growing organically, often
Speaker 1: in oral storytelling traditions, and then it gets influenced by
Speaker 1: various artistic renditions and so forth.
Speaker 2: So today we're going to be talking about some more
Speaker 2: Japanese stories of magical cats. Not all monster cats, but
Speaker 2: some of them are monster cats. But before we get
Speaker 2: into that, I wanted to look at something more broadly
Speaker 2: about the perception of cats as powerful beings. So in
Speaker 2: multiple sources I was reading for the series, there would
Speaker 2: be little comments and asides that were variations on the
Speaker 2: perception that cats just seem to have some kind of obscure,
Speaker 2: hidden power, that something about the nature of the cat
Speaker 2: suggests there's more than meets the eye. And I find
Speaker 2: myself intuitively very much in agreement with that. But I
Speaker 2: would back up and say, even before you get to
Speaker 2: the assumption about magical powers, I think there is just
Speaker 2: something about a cat that suggests power of some sort.
Speaker 2: Like despite the fact that cats are Internet famous for
Speaker 2: being you know, goofy goobers, cute, goofy goobers, no doubt
Speaker 2: they often are just as often when, especially when I'm
Speaker 2: in the physical presence of a cat, I often feel
Speaker 2: that a house cat is commanding a strange, mysterious power
Speaker 2: and respect. And I was talking to my wife Rachel
Speaker 2: about this, and she said, basically she had the same feeling.
Speaker 2: She said, when in the presence of a cat, it's
Speaker 2: this kind of a creature that's holding something over you. Specifically,
Speaker 2: in her case, she talks about the feeling of the
Speaker 2: need to impress a cat like this is an animal
Speaker 2: that is passing judgment on you, and you are failing,
Speaker 2: and there might be some kind of bad consequence to
Speaker 2: the fact that you are not standing up in the
Speaker 2: eyes of the cat. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you go over to a friend's house
Speaker 1: and they have a dog, the dog may initially bark
Speaker 1: at you, but you know, as is often the case
Speaker 1: in my experience, then the owner will say no, no, no,
Speaker 1: Hugo or whatever the dog's name is. This person is fine,
Speaker 1: this person's fine, And eventually, in my experience, the dog
Speaker 1: tends to listen to this and it's like, okay, all right,
Speaker 1: he's fine the cat. You know, the best you can
Speaker 1: do when someone comes over is say like, look, I
Speaker 1: have nothing to do with how this cat is going
Speaker 1: to receive you. I can give you advice, I can
Speaker 1: tell you what not to do, but ultimately it's out
Speaker 1: of my.
Speaker 2: Hands, that's right. Yeah, you know, I'm not the boss
Speaker 2: here in a way. Ye, So I can sense why
Speaker 2: people in various cultures throughout history might start to wonder
Speaker 2: if the domestic cat is brimming with bloodthirsty sorcery, and
Speaker 2: all it would take is that same feeling. I have
Speaker 2: that intuitive sense that the cat is powerful for some reason,
Speaker 2: but paired with the observation that that sense of power
Speaker 2: is incongruous with a cat's actual physical size and strength.
Speaker 2: Like you know, that sense of power cannot be justified
Speaker 2: through what a cat can literally actually do, So the
Speaker 2: mind fills with magic. And I will add that, of course,
Speaker 2: the comparison to dogs is unavoidable. I love dogs. I
Speaker 2: am more of a dog person than a cat person,
Speaker 2: and I would not say this about dogs at all.
Speaker 2: This seems totally unique to cats. Dogs do not seem
Speaker 2: to have hidden power or magic in this way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as a cat person, I find that when I
Speaker 1: encounter a new dog, it's like things often push to
Speaker 1: one extreme or another. You know, a dog is either
Speaker 1: suspicious or hostile towards you, or they are just instantly
Speaker 1: already your friend and want to, you know, get all
Speaker 1: up in your business and see if you have treats
Speaker 1: and so forth, And of course you know, on the
Speaker 1: thread end of the spectrum. Obviously, as in my first example,
Speaker 1: a lot of times it's like yeah, the initial barking
Speaker 1: at a stranger, but then they're like, oh, okay, they're fine.
Speaker 1: But with the cat, there's often there often seems to
Speaker 1: be and again this is general, this is generality. Then
Speaker 1: they're going to be individual exceptions with the cats, as
Speaker 1: there are with the dogs. But they seem to occupy
Speaker 1: this middle ground, you know, where it's like a no friends,
Speaker 1: no enemies approach to relations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's good. But anyways, so this got me wondering, like,
Speaker 2: why is it that cats seem powerful in this way?
Speaker 2: I don't know if they seem this way to everyone,
Speaker 2: but I think at least a lot of people must
Speaker 2: share this feeling I have. And this turned out to
Speaker 2: be a difficult question question to answer in a way
Speaker 2: that felt really solid and empirically justified. I don't think
Speaker 2: I have a great answer to this question, but I've
Speaker 2: turned up a few possible interesting ideas. So the first
Speaker 2: place I look to try to get some empirically justified
Speaker 2: threads on this is I was wondering, well, what are
Speaker 2: the behavioral markers of power in humans that we might
Speaker 2: just be sort of mapping on to the behavior of cats.
Speaker 2: And this is great because you know, the whatever government
Speaker 2: agencies or whatever are tracking my internet behavior must now
Speaker 2: think I'm about to start a second career as one
Speaker 2: of those psychopath dating advice coaches, because I'm here searching
Speaker 2: for studies on what makes humans seem powerful? How do
Speaker 2: humans signal dominance in high status? So TikTok, masculinity, priesthood
Speaker 2: here I come.
Speaker 1: I imagine there's a lot out there that equates dog ownership
Speaker 1: with strength and cat ownership with sensitivity. These are, of
Speaker 1: course both ridiculous stereotypes, but you do see this sort
Speaker 1: of thing reflected, like, look at this guy. He's got
Speaker 1: a big dog. Must be must be a really powerful fellow.
Speaker 1: Look this, this creature is clearly physically powerful, and it
Speaker 1: just works for him. You know, it's observient to him.
Speaker 2: Where is the boss?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Whereas the cat ownership, you know, is often interpreted
Speaker 1: in the opposite direction.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 1: One of the seasonally appropriate examples is, of course, when
Speaker 1: when people realized or I mean, I think this was
Speaker 1: always kind of out in the open, but when people
Speaker 1: realize that that metal musician Glenn Danzig is a cat
Speaker 1: person and has cats and buys cat letter, right, people
Speaker 1: had a lot of fun with that concept because he
Speaker 1: pushes this hyper masculine identity out there, right, and so
Speaker 1: it just dealing with like those really like outrageous gender stereotypes.
Speaker 1: It was like, it seemed counterintuitive that this individual would
Speaker 1: have a cat, But then again, when you get into
Speaker 1: all the spooky stuff, right, it seems perfectly logical that
Speaker 1: he would have multiple black cats.
Speaker 2: I feel like I could have told you Danzig was
Speaker 2: a cat person. I don't know how I knew, but
Speaker 2: I knew. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think there are old photos of them with with
Speaker 1: with cats, long before the kitty or shopping photo went viral.
Speaker 2: But anyway, what did I come up with here? Okay?
Speaker 2: I think about two ideas that are potentially interesting and
Speaker 2: one that was kind of a failed rabbit trail. We'll
Speaker 2: do the failed one first. This idea is about eye contact.
Speaker 2: I have the impression that something about the way a
Speaker 2: cat looks at you can feel intimidating, and that there's
Speaker 2: something about the gaze of a cat that has to
Speaker 2: do with this feeling of power that I impute to them.
Speaker 2: And I wondered if this had something to do with
Speaker 2: our instincts about eye contact. I think it's absolutely clear
Speaker 2: that eye contact is one of the most potent and
Speaker 2: complicated elements of human body language. How much you do
Speaker 2: or don't connect with somebody's gaze, who engages and breaks
Speaker 2: off eye contact, and when they do it. These gestures
Speaker 2: that we make with our eyes are interpreted as containing
Speaker 2: lots of socially relevant information. And if you doubt this,
Speaker 2: just like, try to have a conversation with somebody, but
Speaker 2: don't do what feels natural with eye contact, like force
Speaker 2: yourself to maintain eye contact longer than you naturally would
Speaker 2: or something. It will I guarantee you immediately become extremely
Speaker 2: uncomfortable and you will both get freaked out. For whatever reason.
Speaker 2: Humans just read a lot into how they manage eye
Speaker 2: contact with each other. There are a bunch of studies
Speaker 2: about this, and while there might be a lot of
Speaker 2: different kinds of information encoded in patterns of eye contact,
Speaker 2: it's clear that one of the important types of social
Speaker 2: information that we interpret in patterns of eye contact has
Speaker 2: to do with power, status and dominance. For example, there
Speaker 2: are studies showing that at least in some human on
Speaker 2: human scenarios, people perceive to be powerful or in leadership
Speaker 2: roles are more likely to maintain eye contact once it
Speaker 2: is initiated, so you meet the powerful person's gaze and
Speaker 2: the powerful person will stare you down. Conversely, people who
Speaker 2: are perceived in social interactions as subservient or less powerful
Speaker 2: are more likely to break off eye contact and avert
Speaker 2: their gaze from that of a person they perceive as
Speaker 2: more powerful or higher status than them. So I was
Speaker 2: thinking about this, and I was thinking, what this does
Speaker 2: feel like? It squares with experiences I've had with cats
Speaker 2: where they will just like stare into my eyes until
Speaker 2: I feel uncomfortable and feel like I have to look away.
Speaker 2: And this does appear to be a true dynamic for humans.
Speaker 2: But I couldn't really connect this to any empirical evidence
Speaker 2: that cats are especially prone to this, that cats are
Speaker 2: more likely than any other animal to like hit you
Speaker 2: with a laser beam of unbroken eye contact. Like I said,
Speaker 2: I feel like I've had this experience before, but I
Speaker 2: don't think it's generally true of cats. In fact, a
Speaker 2: lot of veterinary sources I was reading claim exactly the opposite.
Speaker 2: They say that cats tend to find sustained eye contact
Speaker 2: threatening and stressful, and that you should not stare right
Speaker 2: into their eyes because it will bother them, the reasoning
Speaker 2: being that the cats only whole eye contact with each
Speaker 2: other when they are preparing to fight, which would mirror
Speaker 2: the idea that eye contact has something to do with
Speaker 2: sort of like a you know, dominance and competition in mammals.
Speaker 2: So if vets and other experts say that cats generally
Speaker 2: avoid prolonged eye contact with humans, that's sort of the
Speaker 2: opposite of what I was wondering about. So I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe there's something I'm missing, but I think my intuition
Speaker 2: about cats was just wrong in this case.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've heard that cats favor a narrowing of the
Speaker 1: eyes and a head nod, though I've never investigated it
Speaker 1: to see if there's anything substantial backing it up. But
Speaker 1: in my limited experience, it kind of sort of seems
Speaker 1: to work. You know, like if I find myself staring
Speaker 1: at my cats, sometimes I'll do that, and you know,
Speaker 1: it seems like we have a cool moment. But in general, though,
Speaker 1: I would say, in my experience is all very subjective, obviously,
Speaker 1: but cats have very captivating eyes, very large eyes. They're
Speaker 1: the eyes of a predator, you know, an obligate predator.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 1: They also are are eyes that are finely tuned for
Speaker 1: work in low light environments. They will appear to gleam,
Speaker 1: you know, in low light environments, which often has an
Speaker 1: impact on various supernatural interpretations, you know, eyes gleaming in
Speaker 1: the night, glowing in the night, and so forth. Whereas
Speaker 1: with dogs, I don't know. Sometimes I encounter dogs and
Speaker 1: it's like their eyes feel like they're completely dark, you know,
Speaker 1: like they're like a doll's eyes, but not in like
Speaker 1: a threatening Jaws fashion, but in a like this is
Speaker 1: a stuffed animal fashion, like there's no agency here, this,
Speaker 1: this animal is just just dumb, as I'll get out.
Speaker 2: I don't feel that about dogs. But yeah, not.
Speaker 1: All dogs, just some dogs I have encountered. Their eyes
Speaker 1: feel very dark and like I don't read them as well.
Speaker 1: Whereas cat eyes are are if they're wide open, certainly
Speaker 1: they're very intense.
Speaker 2: Well, I think with some dogs you don't really get
Speaker 2: to see much other than the pupil, you know, like
Speaker 2: you're not seeing a lot of the whites of a
Speaker 2: dog's eye usually, which is something we use to interpret
Speaker 2: the theory of mind and other humans because, like you know,
Speaker 2: when we're trying to understand what other humans are thinking,
Speaker 2: we look at where they're looking with their eyes, and
Speaker 2: that necessarily involves being able to see the relative proportion
Speaker 2: of the whites of the eyes on you know, Like
Speaker 2: so we look at where their pupils are pointed with
Speaker 2: a dog, Yeah, a lot of times, like the darker
Speaker 2: part of the eyeball like fills up most of what
Speaker 2: you can see. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And a theory of mind, of course, is central to
Speaker 1: all of this. Anybody who's familiar with animals will tell
Speaker 1: you that, depending on the animal, it may not be
Speaker 1: the eyes that are the prime indicator of mood and
Speaker 1: so forth. I mean, ears are especially important in a
Speaker 1: number of animals, like what are their ears doing, how
Speaker 1: are their ears positioned? And so forth.
Speaker 2: Anyway, Okay, so I think my thing about eye contact
Speaker 2: that's not really going anywhere, But a couple of other
Speaker 2: ideas I think might be onto something. One is about elevation.
Speaker 2: It seems to me that cats often seek to occupy
Speaker 2: high places in the room, on top of shelves and
Speaker 2: tall furniture in lofted areas, looking down on others, And
Speaker 2: unlike dogs, cats are climbers. They can actually get up
Speaker 2: to the high places. So I think even if a
Speaker 2: dog wanted to be up on top of the shelf.
Speaker 2: It probably can't get there, but a cat can. Once again,
Speaker 2: I didn't know if this was a real trend with
Speaker 2: cats or just my personal, idiosyncratic experience. While I looked
Speaker 2: it up to see if there are any studies on this,
Speaker 2: and there are. So I was reading in a book
Speaker 2: called the Domestic Cat, The Biology of Its Behavior from
Speaker 2: Cambridge University Press, two thousand, edited by Turner and Bateson,
Speaker 2: and they're summarizing some research on this, and they say,
Speaker 2: quote Smith at All nineteen ninety four examined the behavior
Speaker 2: of cats in shelters with specific reference to their space
Speaker 2: distribution and object preferences. The cats used structures more often
Speaker 2: than the floor of their pins, and high structures, which
Speaker 2: provided vantage points, were used more frequently than low ones.
Speaker 2: Other studies have confirmed that cats prefer high shelves and
Speaker 2: enclosed areas. So this is not just my gut feeling.
Speaker 2: Researchers have investigated this and they found that yes, cats do,
Speaker 2: on average actually prefer to get up high and look
Speaker 2: down on everyone else. Now pair that with the fact
Speaker 2: that I think it's totally clear that humans frequently use
Speaker 2: physical elevation to signal power. Think of the elevation of
Speaker 2: the king or the queen's throne over the throne room,
Speaker 2: the elevation of the judge's bench over the courtroom, the
Speaker 2: elevation of the preacher's pulpit, etc. It seems like a
Speaker 2: common cross cultural reality that when we went to signal
Speaker 2: that a person is powerful and they must be respected
Speaker 2: and even feared, we put them up on an elevated
Speaker 2: piece of furniture. So related to this cultural convention, which
Speaker 2: in turn might proceed from some biological realities, we regard
Speaker 2: the entity up in a high place looking down on
Speaker 2: us as a being with power over us. Cats, on
Speaker 2: average do selectively seek out elevated perches and high vantage points.
Speaker 2: So I guess that's one possible contributing factor to our
Speaker 2: perceptions of the strange power of a cat. And by
Speaker 2: the way, I was thinking, I can't think of any
Speaker 2: other common domestic animal that is able to do this,
Speaker 2: Like you know, dogs and all the common farm animals
Speaker 2: and so forth don't climb up on shelves to peer
Speaker 2: down at us. The only other one I was thinking
Speaker 2: of was maybe like the goat, which does like to
Speaker 2: get up on top of the roofs, of the pins
Speaker 2: and so forth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was about to ask you if you had
Speaker 1: forgotten our friend the goat, because the goat seems like
Speaker 1: the most striking example of animals that like. You go
Speaker 1: out and you'll see you'll see goats in a field
Speaker 1: and they have access to a hay baal or some
Speaker 1: other elevated structure. You'll often find multiple goats enjoying that
Speaker 1: heightened perspective. Whereas cats, I don't know, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't doubt the research here, but you'll find cats enjoying
Speaker 1: elevated positions, but also shelving and other locations that are
Speaker 1: maybe less high, that are maybe picked out more because
Speaker 1: they are enclosed. You know, they're they're boxy, they're like
Speaker 1: little caves. Likewise, I mean, you'll you'll find cats sleeping
Speaker 1: on shoes and so forth with ground level. So, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it seems less pronounced in cats than with goats.
Speaker 1: For sure, goats would seem to be the superstars uh
Speaker 1: here when it comes to elevated positions, I think the
Speaker 1: we do often put out like little pedestals and throne
Speaker 1: like structures for them to use. Even and of course
Speaker 1: climbing towers and so forth. So we do facilitate uh,
Speaker 1: their their you know, their their desire to have some
Speaker 1: sort of an elevated position, and and also you know,
Speaker 1: that'll end up looking like we have provided a special
Speaker 1: place for them, a throne for them to rule over
Speaker 1: the household. Though at the same time, as we've discussed
Speaker 1: in the show before, they'll also favor say a discarded
Speaker 1: ikea instruction manual that's left on a bed. Oh, they'll
Speaker 1: they'll they'll lay in an empty box. So it's I
Speaker 1: don't know, I feel like they they do.
Speaker 2: What they want.
Speaker 1: You know, you can't you can't entirely expect them to
Speaker 1: just go to the highest place. They're gonna also find
Speaker 1: a comfy place and on that. On that count, I
Speaker 1: would also add that one of the things about cats
Speaker 1: that may make them seem more powerful is the way
Speaker 1: they will recline in sudden some circumstances, especially if they're
Speaker 1: say on a couch where they have something to lean
Speaker 1: their bodies back against. They'll sometimes have this body position
Speaker 1: that makes them look like a reclining bipedal humanoid, and
Speaker 1: you know, their belly will perhaps be a little exaggerated
Speaker 1: since they may be an indoor cat that eats plenty,
Speaker 1: and this will sort of add to this feeling of
Speaker 1: a rotun ruler on.
Speaker 2: Their throne jab of the cat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but at the very least to your point, Yes,
Speaker 1: cats will take advantage of various surface levels on which
Speaker 1: to rest and to you know, view their domain, and
Speaker 1: a lot of times that will put them at a
Speaker 1: certainly at a at a higher vantage point, perhaps one
Speaker 1: that is more on the level with human beings as
Speaker 1: opposed to just being on the floor.
Speaker 2: All right, Another idea I had about cats in the
Speaker 2: perception of power, what if cats seem powerful because they
Speaker 2: are non compliant or non conforming. There are multiple studies
Speaker 2: on this dynamic and human. Just to refer to one
Speaker 2: that seems to be cited a lot, there is a
Speaker 2: study by Sylvia Ballesa, Francesca Gino, and a not Keenan
Speaker 2: called the Red Sneakers Effect Inferring status and competence from
Speaker 2: signals of non conformity. This is from the Journal of
Speaker 2: Consumer Research from twenty fourteen. What seems to have incited
Speaker 2: this research is just some anecdotal observations that run counter
Speaker 2: to the conventional wisdom that if you want to be respected.
Speaker 2: You need to dress sharp. You know. I've heard variations
Speaker 2: on this my whole life. Dress for the job you want,
Speaker 2: not the job you have, and they don't actually include,
Speaker 2: like in that statement, what you're supposed to wear, But
Speaker 2: the unspoken assumption is that this means dress up, not
Speaker 2: dressed down. You know where in my case, the this
Speaker 2: is interpreted as wear a tie, shine your shoes, et cetera.
Speaker 2: But the authors here point out that counter to this
Speaker 2: conventional wisdom in certain sectors of business and culture, they
Speaker 2: cite observations in Silica Valley, there seems to be a
Speaker 2: principle operating in exactly the opposite direction. People in these
Speaker 2: contexts seem to try to signal their power, competence, and
Speaker 2: high status by dressing down relative to their peers. So like,
Speaker 2: you know, the CEO, because they will not tuck their
Speaker 2: shirt in, they're showing up at the board meeting in
Speaker 2: flip flops. So that's just an anecdotal observation. But the
Speaker 2: authors here wanted to put together experiments to investigate empirically whether,
Speaker 2: in some contexts, non conforming behaviors or non compliance with
Speaker 2: social expectations, whether that does on average confer the appearance
Speaker 2: of power, competence, and high status, and generally in their
Speaker 2: experiments which involve different kinds of you know, like staged
Speaker 2: encounters you might imagine in a university or business setting
Speaker 2: or whatever. They did indeed find that sometimes non compliance
Speaker 2: and non conformity are interpreted by others as signs of power,
Speaker 2: and they compare non conformity and non compliance with social
Speaker 2: expectations to a form of conspicuous consumption. Conspicuous consumption is
Speaker 2: a classic concept where people try to show off their
Speaker 2: high status by showing off that they can afford luxury goods, so,
Speaker 2: you know, having like expensive jewelry on or wearing you know,
Speaker 2: something that is impractically expensive and expensive car or something
Speaker 2: like that to make people think that you are powerful
Speaker 2: and important. In their discussion section, the authors write, quote,
Speaker 2: we demonstrate that non conforming behavior as a costly, invisible signal,
Speaker 2: can operate similarly to conspicuous consumption and compared to conforming behavior,
Speaker 2: lead to inferences of enhanced status and competence in the
Speaker 2: eyes of others. Across a series of lab and field studies,
Speaker 2: we explore observer's reactions to a variety of non conforming
Speaker 2: behaviors in different settings and find that observers can for
Speaker 2: higher status and competence to non conforming individuals compared to
Speaker 2: conforming ones. At a process level, our investigation reveals that
Speaker 2: the positive inferences from signals of non conformity are driven
Speaker 2: by perceived autonomy and moderated by observer's need for uniqueness.
Speaker 2: So the theory here seems to be that people interpret
Speaker 2: non conformity as an honest display of autonomy. Somebody who
Speaker 2: is not complying with social expectations is sort of conveying
Speaker 2: I will be fine without your approval, I don't need it,
Speaker 2: which ironically in some cases makes some people seem more competent,
Speaker 2: more powerful, and more worthy of respect. So what are
Speaker 2: the boundaries of this effect? Because it obviously does not
Speaker 2: apply in every scenario, the authors in this paper, across
Speaker 2: their multiple studies think that. Well, they say, they find
Speaker 2: that this effect only appears when the observer is familiar
Speaker 2: with the environment and social expectations within it. So you know,
Speaker 2: when there are quote established norms of formal conduct in
Speaker 2: the given context, and when the observer knows what they are.
Speaker 2: So like, there have to be implied social rules in
Speaker 2: a place, and the observer has to know what they are.
Speaker 2: They also find that the perception of status and competence
Speaker 2: associated with nonconformity only appears if the observer believes that
Speaker 2: the person in question, the non conforming person, is violating
Speaker 2: the norms on purpose. If it seems like they're simply
Speaker 2: not aware that they're dressing or speaking inappropriately, that doesn't
Speaker 2: confer any sense of power. The power comes from willful
Speaker 2: flaunting of social expectations. So how does this connect to cats?
Speaker 2: Obviously cats don't dress themselves or use language, so it
Speaker 2: wouldn't make sense to talk about them intentionally flaunting expected
Speaker 2: dress codes or ways of speaking. But I think basically
Speaker 2: anybody would have to agree that cats exude an air
Speaker 2: of non compliance in nonconformitypecially victually when contrasted with other
Speaker 2: domestic animals like the dog. The dog, of course, you know,
Speaker 2: highly social and usually quite eager to please. The dog
Speaker 2: will put on a tie for you if it can,
Speaker 2: by God, But there is something about the way that
Speaker 2: like if you try to train a cat, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's it's not true that you can't train a cat.
Speaker 2: Sometimes people do do it, but it is notoriously difficult,
Speaker 2: and often when people try it on their own. The
Speaker 2: cat just ignores you, often not just ignoring you, but
Speaker 2: like staring right in your face while it ignores what
Speaker 2: you want it to do. And I think that does
Speaker 2: maybe convey a sense of willful flaunting of social expectations
Speaker 2: that could map on to these intuitions we have about
Speaker 2: human behavior that when somebody is just like, no, I'm
Speaker 2: just not going to comply with the social norms, that
Speaker 2: makes them seem like, oh wow, this is a powerful
Speaker 2: person and I have maybe I should respect them.
Speaker 1: Well, it is true that cat are quite ungovernable, the
Speaker 1: notoriously so. It's also one of their their charms too,
Speaker 1: but one of the frustrations of keeping them as well.
Speaker 1: There's a sticker design out there. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: get served ads for it all the time on like Instagram,
Speaker 1: I guess because I look at cat videos and it's
Speaker 1: like a cartoon cat with two middle fingers up and
Speaker 1: it says you can't stop me, which I love because
Speaker 1: it does perfectly capture the spirit of the cat. They
Speaker 1: will do what they want. And yeah, like I imagine
Speaker 1: it's different like if a dog, say, were to poop
Speaker 1: on your bed, you know, this would what would that
Speaker 1: be like Joe, what is a dog owner? How does
Speaker 1: that go down?
Speaker 2: You get the sense that when a dog, I mean,
Speaker 2: all dogs are different, of course, so we're speaking in generalizations,
Speaker 2: but I think on average dog owners will probably say
Speaker 2: that a dog can be made to feel ashamed about
Speaker 2: like that. You show the dog that they pooped on
Speaker 2: the bed, there's a sense that like, the dog couldn't
Speaker 2: help it. It just got caught up in the moment,
Speaker 2: or it really needed to go and it pooped on
Speaker 2: the bed. And then it looks at the poop and
Speaker 2: it's like, I'm sorry. A cat, you don't get that
Speaker 2: at all.
Speaker 1: That's right with a cat. The first part may still
Speaker 1: obviously be true. The cat could various circumstances just made
Speaker 1: it to where the cat ended up leaving its poop
Speaker 1: on the bed. But there is this feeling that the
Speaker 1: cat is saying, actually, this is where my poop goes. Now,
Speaker 1: this is just how it is. I have made this decision,
Speaker 1: and what.
Speaker 2: Are you going to do about it? I don't need
Speaker 2: your approval.
Speaker 1: Yeah you don't like it, there move it. You're the
Speaker 1: one who handles my poop for me. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that you encountered this all the time with cats,
Speaker 1: Like you attempt to get them a new litter that
Speaker 1: will be better for them and better for the whole household,
Speaker 1: and they reject it, or you get them a comfany
Speaker 1: new bed, but instead they're going to go sweep on
Speaker 1: the instructions for putting together the fancy cat bed that
Speaker 1: you just bought. You know, they're gonna do what they want.
Speaker 1: They're not necessarily They may do what you want in time,
Speaker 1: but they're not going to do it on your schedule.
Speaker 1: They have their own agenda in place.
Speaker 2: So to summarize, I don't think I have a comprehensive
Speaker 2: theory about why cats seem powerful, but I think we
Speaker 2: got a few interesting ideas there. I think the non
Speaker 2: compliance and nonconformity thing maybe a big part of it.
Speaker 2: I think the elevation might possibly be a part of it.
Speaker 2: I don't think the eye contact thing really goes anywhere,
Speaker 2: but I'd be interested what listeners think, especially if you
Speaker 2: have a I don't know if you're like a vet
Speaker 2: you work with cats or anything, or even if you
Speaker 2: know you just got a lot of cats and you
Speaker 2: want to tell us about them, Like, where do you
Speaker 2: think the sense that cats have a hidden power comes
Speaker 2: from I think.
Speaker 1: Another area that comes to mind is this sort of
Speaker 1: idea that there is a vanity, like like a king
Speaker 1: Lee or queenly vanity to the cat. And I was
Speaker 1: thinking about this specifically last night because my son and
Speaker 1: I are I'm slowly reading Watership Down to him when
Speaker 1: we still do some story time. He does lots of
Speaker 1: reading on his own, but I was like, Watership, you're
Speaker 1: into all these animal books. Let's do Watership Down. And
Speaker 1: we were just reading a part in this in which
Speaker 1: the rabbits encounter a cat. A cat in Watership Down
Speaker 1: is a deadly illegal in one of the thousand enemies
Speaker 1: of the rabbit people, but in this encounter they managed
Speaker 1: to outrun the cat. And one of the rabbit's comments
Speaker 1: that the cats quote hate to look foolish, and this
Speaker 1: matches up with a lot of the things that one
Speaker 1: sees in cat behavior. They will often seemingly walk off
Speaker 1: stumbles and mistakes with a kind of nonchalant that didn't
Speaker 1: happen vibe. This is, of course all theory of mind
Speaker 1: and personification on our part, but that's how we often
Speaker 1: end up interpreting it. So the cat may seem prideful
Speaker 1: and powerful in a way, you know, kind of like
Speaker 1: eager to cover up a stumble it made, when of course,
Speaker 1: in reality, the cat is just doing some mix of
Speaker 1: just recovering from whatever they did wrong and moving on
Speaker 1: or conserving energy instead of wasting you know, time focusing
Speaker 1: on it. It's also coming back a little bit to
Speaker 1: the subjects that we discussed in the last episode, this
Speaker 1: idea of cats catching on early in Japan, with with royalty,
Speaker 1: with nobility, and you have this, this this clear mental
Speaker 1: picture of a Japanese emperor, someone who is in a
Speaker 1: position where I'm you know, I'm imagining there's a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of yes men surrounding them, there's a
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of power, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: things being done in such a way as to please
Speaker 1: the emperor, and then into their life strolls a cat,
Speaker 1: which which you know is adorable and interesting, but also
Speaker 1: is not going to do what an emperor wants the
Speaker 1: cat to do. Like again, they are ungovernable to the
Speaker 1: last of them, to a fault. Even so, I think
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting to imagine that scenario and being part
Speaker 1: of there, and it's almost like they occupy would have
Speaker 1: occupied like this gesture's place, uh, in the presence of
Speaker 1: the emperor. Like here is here is a creature that
Speaker 1: will not do whatever I want, And in a way
Speaker 1: there's something liberating about that.
Speaker 2: I think that's a really good comparison. Yeah, like the
Speaker 2: power of the jester, like the one who can criticize
Speaker 2: the king because they're a goober. Yeah.
Speaker 1: All right, Now, coming back a bit to Japanese lore
Speaker 1: and legend and tradition concerning cats. I want to get
Speaker 1: into a few other ideas here. I want to mention
Speaker 1: again that two of my primary sources here are kaid
Speaker 1: Yo The Supernatural Cats of Japan by Zach Davison, and
Speaker 1: then also a book titled the Japanese Myths The Guide
Speaker 1: to God's Heroes and Spirits by Joshua Friedman. The first
Speaker 1: cat I want to touch on, I think I may
Speaker 1: have mentioned this one in passing, but is the cat
Speaker 1: is the Meneki Neko, the inviting cat. This is a
Speaker 1: cat that I think everyone a cat statue if you will,
Speaker 1: that I think everyone has seen, probably in person, probably
Speaker 1: in multitudes at times. If you haven't seen one in person,
Speaker 1: surely you've seen an image of this. This is a
Speaker 1: little statue of a cat gesturing with it, with it
Speaker 1: with a face down paw, welcoming good luck into a space.
Speaker 1: A lot of times these are like solar and or
Speaker 1: battery powered as well, and so you get that little
Speaker 1: motion of the inviting paw.
Speaker 2: I don't think I knew what this was called, but
Speaker 2: I thought of this as the lucky cat, and it
Speaker 2: kind of has a in some forms. It has a
Speaker 2: paw that waves like the lever of an old school
Speaker 2: cash register.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. It's its origins are in the Edo period,
Speaker 1: when it was apparently observed that cats sometimes manipulate their
Speaker 1: paw in this way that resembles the Japanese traditional hand
Speaker 1: gesture to come inside. I think in Western traditions it's
Speaker 1: often easy to look at that and think of like
Speaker 1: waving or like you say, pulling a lever, But in
Speaker 1: Japanese tradition, I believe this would be more like yeah,
Speaker 1: come inside. And the cat then is welcoming good luck.
Speaker 1: Generally inside a home or business, they are not, and
Speaker 1: I can't stress this enough, not welcoming in vampires. So
Speaker 1: if you were a vampire out there, do not misinterpret
Speaker 1: a lut cat as being an open invitation to come
Speaker 1: inside because it's not gonna work.
Speaker 2: I can't believe this has never come up before. Does
Speaker 2: when a vampire has to be invited in? Does that
Speaker 2: apply to places of business or only to homes? And
Speaker 2: if it applies to places of business, is the open
Speaker 2: sign welcome enough or does it have to come out
Speaker 2: of a person's mouth?
Speaker 1: I don't know. It depends on the interpretation. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: it's by appointment only, I think the vampire cannot come
Speaker 1: inside all right. Now, As for the luck cats, though
Speaker 1: Davison shares several more tidbits, I wasn't familiar with any
Speaker 1: of this. I'm gonna stress though, that there's no real
Speaker 1: canon here regarding what any of these details mean. And
Speaker 1: some he'll apparently find traditions that are the opposite of
Speaker 1: some of the standards here, But in general, you look
Speaker 1: at one of these lut cats, you may see a
Speaker 1: red bib or collar. This is a symbol of Buddhist vinage.
Speaker 1: Oftentimes you'll see it holding a coin, a gold coin.
Speaker 1: This is from the Edo period as well. It's called
Speaker 1: a cobine. It represents like vast wealth. And I think
Speaker 1: there's also this idea too, that is kind of like,
Speaker 1: as Davidson points out, like pearls before swine. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like a coin for a cat is something that
Speaker 1: a cat cannot actually appreciate, but it's kind of fun
Speaker 1: that it has it.
Speaker 2: The cat would rather have a lot of aluminum foil.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the colors mean a lot. Apparently you often see
Speaker 1: white ones. A white luck cat typically means happiness. It's
Speaker 1: inviting in happiness, red color real it's inviting in relationship
Speaker 1: success or and or protection from illness. The black color
Speaker 1: is protection from evil spirits. Gold cats obviously mean money.
Speaker 1: But then there are all sorts of newer colors that
Speaker 1: have apparently been introduced just in general popular culture, like
Speaker 1: blue for academic success, green for health, pink for love,
Speaker 1: and then Kaliko apparently is considered the luckiest of all,
Speaker 1: I guess because you get a combination of colors and
Speaker 1: calicos of like luck associations like traditionally in Japan, also
Speaker 1: depending on which hand is doing the waving, Some traditions
Speaker 1: say left hand invites in money, right brings in customers,
Speaker 1: though sometimes apparently this is reversed so it depends who
Speaker 1: you're asking about it. Some say right is for home
Speaker 1: left is for business left hand. It also apparently has
Speaker 1: a connotation with holding one's liquor, which apparently ties into
Speaker 1: the idea, particularly with a luck cat in a restaurant,
Speaker 1: of keeping clients drinking so that they're ordering more food.
Speaker 1: But again that nothing is there's no strict canon re
Speaker 1: coat here. You'll find various interpretations of this. Again, origins
Speaker 1: go back to the Edo period. You would have these
Speaker 1: motionless clay models, and there are a number of stories
Speaker 1: that lay out how these clay statues.
Speaker 2: Came to be.
Speaker 1: There are some stories apparently in which you have a
Speaker 1: situation where a hero is saved from ill, luck or
Speaker 1: attack by a becketting cat in the night, and therefore
Speaker 1: after the fact they're like, oh, well this cat saved
Speaker 1: my life, I will now honor it. There's one story
Speaker 1: that Davison relates in which there's like a samurai protecting
Speaker 1: this woman. They're going through the dark streets at night.
Speaker 1: This cat jumps out, he thinks it's a threat, He
Speaker 1: slays the cat and then realizes, oh, this cat was
Speaker 1: protecting us or warning us, and then he feels vast
Speaker 1: guilt and a shrine is built to the cats. There's
Speaker 1: also a cat temple origin story of sorts. There's an
Speaker 1: actual cat temple in Japan, Gotukuji, I believe, is what
Speaker 1: it is called. So the cat is apparently, in some
Speaker 1: traditions said to be one of only two animals that
Speaker 1: did not weep upon the death of the Buddha. I've
Speaker 1: seen it also put other ways that the cat does
Speaker 1: not accept the Buddha's teaching. Whatever the details, you know,
Speaker 1: it matches up with the spirit of the cat. The
Speaker 1: cat does not seem likely to be greatly emotionally disturbed
Speaker 1: by the death of even the Buddha, and also is
Speaker 1: going to be rather neutral on Buddhist teachings.
Speaker 2: The cat is like, I will keep my attachments, thank
Speaker 2: you very much.
Speaker 1: Yes, But the story goes that, okay, cats are not
Speaker 1: really lined up with the spirit of Buddhist teachings. Therefore
Speaker 1: they're not a great animal to have at a holy site.
Speaker 1: But the story is that a monk kept one anyway
Speaker 1: because it was cute, adorable, et cetera, et cetera, so
Speaker 1: he hides it from the abbot there. But then one
Speaker 1: night during a storm, the cat invites a powerful lord
Speaker 1: to the temple for refuge, and that temple Kotukuji becomes
Speaker 1: the Cat Temple and today hosts thousands of luck cats.
Speaker 1: You can find various pictures of this place online and
Speaker 1: just yeah, tons and tons of white luck cats.
Speaker 2: Wow. I'm looking at a picture you included in the
Speaker 2: outline and it looks like drifts of snow with strawberry. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are a bunch of them. Now, again we
Speaker 1: discuss that there's a lot of overlap with these different
Speaker 1: stories about the cats, supernatural cats of Japan, and this
Speaker 1: general idea that there's kind of an evolution. A cat
Speaker 1: becomes old enough, a cat becomes one hundred years old,
Speaker 1: and then the tail splits, it becomes something else. More
Speaker 1: tails mean more power, even to change its shape and
Speaker 1: take on human form and manipulate aid or hunt humans
Speaker 1: for sport, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Oh and when you said this, I just realized I
Speaker 2: forgot to mention when I did the recap at the
Speaker 2: beginning that yes, the nekomata has a forked taiale or
Speaker 2: two tails. That's like primary characteristic. I left out apologies
Speaker 2: about that.
Speaker 1: Now, while a lot of these ideas with supernatural cats
Speaker 1: are or they become the idea that this is something
Speaker 1: that a normal cat can and will turn into one.
Speaker 1: Exception to this is the idea of the neko musumi.
Speaker 1: This is the cat daughter. Zach Davison discusses this in
Speaker 1: the book The Cat Daughter in Question. Here is a
Speaker 1: cat human hybrid, but her origin isn't situated in the
Speaker 1: domestic cat at all. She's not a former domestic cat
Speaker 1: that is transformed into this state. She's also attributed with
Speaker 1: certain acts that are feline in nature, like cat bathing
Speaker 1: and killing of rodents in line with her feline qualities. Now,
Speaker 1: as Davison lays out the origins of this one and
Speaker 1: the path of his evolution, kind of walks through a
Speaker 1: couple of centuries of weird tales and oddities in Japanese culture.
Speaker 1: The earliest version of the tail stems from the Missy
Speaker 1: Momo or Seeing Things shows in the seventeen hundreds. These,
Speaker 1: he writes, were quote a combination of American freak shows,
Speaker 1: haunted houses, and the believe it or Not style of
Speaker 1: exhibitions still popular today. So amid so this would this
Speaker 1: would be a situation for you to encounter various Jokai artifacts,
Speaker 1: including the original Fiji mermaid, which originated here in this setting,
Speaker 1: and then you know, ended up traveling into the west,
Speaker 1: but this is where the original Cat Daughter is said
Speaker 1: to have existed. It's unknown, however, if this was somebody
Speaker 1: that had a birth defect, if it was somebody who
Speaker 1: had been made up with special makeup or lighting, or
Speaker 1: if it's with some combination of different elements. But there
Speaker 1: was supposedly an individual that was the Cat Daughter, and
Speaker 1: you would pay to see them.
Speaker 2: Are there even any physical descriptions other than that, in
Speaker 2: some sense, some vague sense, she looks like a cat.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I think we don't have a
Speaker 1: lot to go on here, based on my reading of Davidson.
Speaker 1: So the misimomo shows they die out, maybe they're no
Speaker 1: longer popular. But the story here of the Cat Daughter
Speaker 1: comes back during the Edo period in the Kaiden or
Speaker 1: ghost story collections. Sometimes she's called the Licking Girl again
Speaker 1: because she's half cat half human and she does things
Speaker 1: that a cat will do, like bathe herself by licking
Speaker 1: or fur, and of course killing various rodents. That's also huge.
Speaker 1: But again, her origins in these cases are still mysterious.
Speaker 1: Nobody's saying that she was a domestic cat at one point.
Speaker 1: She's just this anomaly, and apparently accounts during the Edo
Speaker 1: period also sometimes present her again as a historical fact.
Speaker 1: Davidson points out that there's like one particular work that's
Speaker 1: primarily a historical and political diary, and they just refer
Speaker 1: to the cat daughter as a fact, like this is
Speaker 1: a person that exists or existed, which I guess makes
Speaker 1: sense if its origins are in this Missy Momo seeing
Speaker 1: things show. But then things continue to evolve, and finally,
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties, the story takes on this form
Speaker 1: of a Buddhist morality lesson. So in this story, you
Speaker 1: have a father who makes his living producing cat skin
Speaker 1: shamasin's this is a stringed instrument that was sometimes traditionally
Speaker 1: made with cat or dog skin. And so in this story,
Speaker 1: the father has killed something like five hundred cats in
Speaker 1: his trade to make these these nice musical instruments that
Speaker 1: he sells. But this ends up cursing his bloodline, causing
Speaker 1: his daughter to be born as park cat.
Speaker 2: So this is something kind of like a karmic punishment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Now I want to point out there are
Speaker 1: also illustrations of the Niko mata from the seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 1: We talked about the Nikomada in the last episode, which
Speaker 1: depicts this creature in sort of like a cat humanoid
Speaker 1: form playing a shamasen, and this was, I guess apparently
Speaker 1: amusing because the shamasin might have been made out of
Speaker 1: cat skin. All Right, the next one I want to
Speaker 1: discuss very briefly. I don't think I'm gonna go into
Speaker 1: this one much, but if you happen to be on
Speaker 1: any of our social media profiles, you may have seen
Speaker 1: an image selected to promote this episode, and it consists
Speaker 1: of what appears to be just a giant chonker of
Speaker 1: a cat, maybe not even leaping, but just sort of
Speaker 1: reaching out of the of the high bushes and small
Speaker 1: trees to swat at a human or a pair of
Speaker 1: humans and cause them great agony and fear.
Speaker 2: Elephant sized cat rising like steam out of the weeds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the cat I love his, this very sort
Speaker 1: of neutral look on its face. Like it it doesn't
Speaker 1: look fearsome. And there are plenty of depictions of cats
Speaker 1: taking on you know, sort of evil and terrifying facial features,
Speaker 1: but this one, this cat looks very neutral as he
Speaker 1: as he sort of you know, emerges from the bushes,
Speaker 1: and yeah, he's a total chonker. Very much reminds me
Speaker 1: of the cat meme of Oh laud he come in.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've seen this one. This is
Speaker 1: the highest level on the chalk spectrum for how chunky
Speaker 1: a cat.
Speaker 2: Maybe I'm not familiar, but I understand the concept. Okay,
Speaker 2: This picture is a nineteenth century image from Kawanabi Kyoshi.
Speaker 2: This is supposed to be a giant cat attacking people
Speaker 2: in the forest. Now, this is supposed to be a
Speaker 2: depiction of the aeromote o ya maneko or the aeromote
Speaker 2: great mountain cat. So this is a remote island of Japan,
Speaker 2: and it is indeed home to a small aeromote cat,
Speaker 2: a subspecies of leopard cat that is only found there.
Speaker 2: It's critically endangered. It is not giant, but there are
Speaker 2: legends of a much bigger cat with shining eyes that
Speaker 2: lives in the mountain. So I guess you could say
Speaker 2: it's kind of a cryptid of Japan. And you know,
Speaker 2: who knows if there's anything to this. Again, cats when
Speaker 2: they're they may have that appearance.
Speaker 1: Of glowing eyes in the dark, and you can image
Speaker 1: and how just just sighting one of these normal small
Speaker 1: wildcats could have led to this idea that there's something
Speaker 1: bigger lurking in the wilds.
Speaker 2: I was thinking about this after we recorded part one
Speaker 2: the other day, because of course, the world is full
Speaker 2: of actual big cat predators, lions, tigers, leopards, you know,
Speaker 2: these are large predatory felines that can could really mess
Speaker 2: you up. But it seems that the idea of taking
Speaker 2: like even if you live in a place where there
Speaker 2: are no large predatory cats, you could almost like invent
Speaker 2: the idea yourself just by looking at a house cat
Speaker 2: and thinking, wow, this we're bigger and stronger, I'd really
Speaker 2: be in trouble.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean that's that's obviously always a concern
Speaker 1: with cats. You know, there's always the joke about like
Speaker 1: if a cat we're larger than a human, you know,
Speaker 1: you would just eat you that sort of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I guess it's it's always you never want
Speaker 1: to air just entirely on the side of oh, well,
Speaker 1: there's a tradition in this culture of a giant animal
Speaker 1: that animals certainly existed, because obviously that's not always the case.
Speaker 1: I mean, because the human imagination is powerful enough to
Speaker 1: imagine large and small versions of any animals. There are
Speaker 1: no giant man sized spiders in Japan, but there are
Speaker 1: still stories about them exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And we make this point a lot on the show.
Speaker 2: Sometimes weird stories and myths and legends do go back
Speaker 2: to some kind of historical event that maybe is getting
Speaker 2: altered through retelling. But it doesn't have to be that way.
Speaker 2: You don't have to assume that every crazy story goes
Speaker 2: back to something that really happened. People just are creative
Speaker 2: people make things up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's really a disservice at times
Speaker 1: to the human imagination and to and also to the
Speaker 1: traditions of various peoples to say like, oh, well, they
Speaker 1: clearly didn't think of this on their own. It must
Speaker 1: have been encrypted or Another version of this, of course,
Speaker 1: is the idea like, oh, look at this weird thing
Speaker 1: in their art. It has to be ancient aliens. Like
Speaker 1: when you do that, there are a number of problems
Speaker 1: with the aliens. I bought this, as we've touched on
Speaker 1: many times before, but a big one too, is like
Speaker 1: you're you're doing a disservice to whatever traditional society you're
Speaker 1: commenting on by saying that this thing that they that
Speaker 1: they imagined, interpreted, that you know, has this important role
Speaker 1: in their belief system. When you just say, oh, that's
Speaker 1: that's people from another planet. That's not nothing they did.
Speaker 1: This is nothing that is a part of them. This
Speaker 1: is something external to.
Speaker 2: Them, right, And of course that applies to like real
Speaker 2: human accomplishments, you know, buildings and structures. Saying like, oh,
Speaker 2: people couldn't have done that without without alien help. That
Speaker 2: is wrong, misguided, not an appropriate reaction to the evidence,
Speaker 2: and it is insulting to you know, people who worked
Speaker 2: hard and we're clever. But also it applies to stories.
Speaker 2: You know, stories were say like, oh, you know, this
Speaker 2: being came out of the water and it had these
Speaker 2: physical features and all those things. There's no reason you
Speaker 2: have to assume that that's based on people actually encountering
Speaker 2: some being they didn't understand. People were creative in the past,
Speaker 2: just like they're creative now. People today make up stories
Speaker 2: about fantastical beings and beasts. They did then too, right,
Speaker 2: But then again, you know, we are creatures that live
Speaker 2: in the natural world, and we are often inspired by
Speaker 2: the natural world, and we kind of get back into that.
Speaker 2: In the final example, I want to highlight here this
Speaker 2: may be one of my favorites. It is the idea
Speaker 2: of the kasha. This one's interesting because in its origin
Speaker 2: it is not a cat at all, but a terrifying
Speaker 2: flaming cart with or without only attendants, so terrifying, you know,
Speaker 2: troll like demon beings attending it or sometimes not attending it.
Speaker 2: It comes down from the sky to drag away the
Speaker 2: souls of sinners who are living in the end times,
Speaker 2: drag them down to Hell and its many torments because
Speaker 2: the cycle of reincarnation has run its course. Oh you know,
Speaker 2: there's everything is broken, so it's time for the hell
Speaker 2: cart to come and just drag people away. Or at
Speaker 2: least that's how Kamakura Buddhists of the twelfth through fourteenth
Speaker 2: centuries apparently viewed matters. But much later, during the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 2: you have influential yokai chronicler Tori Yama Sekan coming around.
Speaker 2: We've talked about him before because a very influential figure
Speaker 2: in sort of laying out what various yo kai looked
Speaker 2: like and also just straight up making things up, like
Speaker 2: very much like creating things on his own. I think
Speaker 2: we've touched on some of these before where when you
Speaker 2: many yokai have you know, very you know, cultural origins
Speaker 2: within the larger culture and in traditional folk beliefs, and
Speaker 2: particularly in rural areas, but also in many in urban
Speaker 2: areas as well. But sometimes Sekan just sort of made
Speaker 2: something up because it was clever, or you know, it
Speaker 2: commented on some social or political element of the time, that.
Speaker 1: Sort of thing. So he comes along and he reinterprets
Speaker 1: the kasha as a cat creature covered in flames, a
Speaker 1: fearsome cat creature. And Joe, I've included an image.
Speaker 2: Of the kasha here as a yokai for you that
Speaker 2: is brutal. The flames are coming off of its sideways.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's these wonderful like Japanese flames that kind
Speaker 1: of feel like tendrils or tentacles, you know, like they're
Speaker 1: reaching out to grab you. There's also this kind of
Speaker 1: like spiral motif behind it, like it has just come
Speaker 1: out of a warp from the hell domains. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: a fearsome creature come to get your soul.
Speaker 2: I guess the sideways flames suggests like a whipping wind
Speaker 2: or a storm or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so a very chaotic entity. And according to Davison,
Speaker 1: this is purely a product of Sakan's creativity, but his
Speaker 1: work was again highly influential, so it stuck. The kasha
Speaker 1: was now a flesh eating animal spirit, and especially for
Speaker 1: the wicked, the idea is that during your funeral possession,
Speaker 1: a great wind may blow everything over. Knock over your casket,
Speaker 1: open up the cask, your body comes rolling out, and
Speaker 1: then in swoops the kasha to consume your corpse.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Now, eventually those Nikomata stories we talked about in the
Speaker 1: first episode, they end up influencing this kasha legend, making
Speaker 1: it a normal house cat that has been transformed due
Speaker 1: to its proximity to the human dead. So allow a
Speaker 1: normal cat to access a dead human body and they
Speaker 1: will transform into a kasha and drag it away, you know,
Speaker 1: and you know it may its tail may split, and
Speaker 1: all the other motifs that we've discussed. But something about
Speaker 1: being near the dead body, or drinking blood of the dead,
Speaker 1: or you know, licking the body of the dead as
Speaker 1: something of this nature will cause this transformation. Now, in
Speaker 1: the last episode we mentioned that stories concerning the bacan
Speaker 1: eko in the dead, how these were probably linked on
Speaker 1: various levels. To observations of post mortem predation of human
Speaker 1: corpses by cats. Now it's not just cats, Dogs and
Speaker 1: other pets have also been observed to do this, to
Speaker 1: have a little to eat off of a dead human body.
Speaker 1: Apparently dogs wait a while and are a little more
Speaker 1: concerned about it in regards to cats. I think cats
Speaker 1: do it. I didn't look up any hard data on this,
Speaker 1: but Davidson alludes to this, but at any rate, cats
Speaker 1: will get in there and have a little to eat
Speaker 1: off of the dead.
Speaker 2: One of the probably disturbing realities to humans coming on
Speaker 2: the scene is that I've read when this happens, the animals,
Speaker 2: including cats, often go for the face first.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's not personal, it's just nature. Cats are meteors.
Speaker 1: But this is a case where the Kasha legend seems
Speaker 1: to be linked to these observations as well. So you
Speaker 1: get this idea that like, look, keep the cats away
Speaker 1: from the dead or they will interfere with them, which
Speaker 1: on one level, yes, absolutely true. They will. They will
Speaker 1: probably have a little bite, they will investigate the meat.
Speaker 1: And you can imagine how this takes on fantastic exaggerated proportions.
Speaker 1: The idea that the cat is not just going to
Speaker 1: eat of the dead. The cat may do something more
Speaker 1: directly that impacts the soul of the deceased. They may
Speaker 1: drag them to hell, they may take on the form
Speaker 1: of the deceased, or as pops up in stories concerning
Speaker 1: both the Kasha and the Nikomata, they may leap over
Speaker 1: the body, and in doing so they kind of unleash
Speaker 1: invisible strings that then reanimate the dead.
Speaker 2: They raise the dead through invisible strings. Wow, I love that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So here we have a very you know,
Speaker 1: necromantic view of the powers of the cat, you know,
Speaker 1: and and again it's it's fascinating because yes it is fantastic,
Speaker 1: and it ties into all these other ideas in the
Speaker 1: given culture here. But also a lot of it is
Speaker 1: that did in just our experiences of living with cats,
Speaker 1: that cats do seem to have this this secrecy, this neutrality,
Speaker 1: and they do things at times that seem to imply
Speaker 1: some some darker agenda, some some hidden system of rules
Speaker 1: and laws that govern their behavior, you know, either in
Speaker 1: this world or the next. Uh. They're they're they're they're
Speaker 1: constantly fascinating and constantly forcing us to wonder, like, what
Speaker 1: are they up to? What are they on about? What's
Speaker 1: their whole deal?
Speaker 2: Well, Rob, I have greatly enjoyed this exploration of the
Speaker 2: various magical cat morphs and altered cats of Japan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. And next week
Speaker 1: we'll have an all new exploration for the Halloween season.
Speaker 1: I don't think we've entirely decided what it is yet,
Speaker 1: but it'll it'll be awesome, trust us. Now. On another note,
Speaker 1: I mentioned social media earlier. Go check out our various
Speaker 1: social media presences if you haven't had a chance, because
Speaker 1: they're all back up and running. You can find them
Speaker 1: all linked on stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: We are STBYM podcast on Instagram. If you use any
Speaker 1: of these things, go check them out. If you don't
Speaker 1: use any of these things, hey, don't go sign up
Speaker 1: for them because we said we were using them.
Speaker 2: It's not worth it. But if you're already there.
Speaker 1: If you're already there, it's a way to keep up
Speaker 1: with what we're doing on the show. You may notice
Speaker 1: that we have some new host photos. You can see
Speaker 1: new photos of Joe and myself. These were taken at
Speaker 1: the Museum of Illusions, Atlanta, a delightful and educational attraction
Speaker 1: located in Atlantic Station here in Atlanta. This facility features
Speaker 1: a whole host of visual illusions, including illusion rooms you
Speaker 1: can walk into and interact with. They also have cameras
Speaker 1: there and also you can bring in your own devices,
Speaker 1: take your own selfies, and enjoy all sorts of strange illusions, mirror,
Speaker 1: unreal reflections, that sort of thing. Joe, we had a
Speaker 1: really good time looking into various infinity mirrors. There's even
Speaker 1: an upside down room.
Speaker 2: You remember this one. Yes, I really enjoyed the hatch
Speaker 2: that goes down forever. It gave me evocations of the
Speaker 2: House of Leaves.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, that was a really fun one. We tried
Speaker 1: to get some photo We got a few photos there,
Speaker 1: but it was really hard to capture that infinity feeling.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Museum Evolutions Atlanta. It's fun for all ages.
Speaker 1: You can learn more about it at m OI Atlanta
Speaker 1: dot com. Oh and while we're at it, hey, it's
Speaker 1: Halloween season. We have a new logo design for the
Speaker 1: Halloween season. You can get it on various merch if
Speaker 1: you go to our merch store go to stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Yourmind dot com and click the store tab. You
Speaker 1: can also find images of this on our various social
Speaker 1: media accounts. But it's the Stuff to Blow your Mind logo,
Speaker 1: but with some various occult images added to it, and
Speaker 1: you can get that on any shirt color.
Speaker 2: Get one in time for Halloween.
Speaker 1: Yeah, get a sticker, get of whatever else they make.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you want one, don't let us pressure you.
Speaker 2: Come on.
Speaker 1: It's there for fun. It's there for fun if you want,
Speaker 1: how do you as well?
Speaker 2: What's the most non coercive way to encourage people to buy?
Speaker 2: Go buy, but you don't have to, but go buy.
Speaker 1: We made something that we think is fun, but it's
Speaker 1: totally optional.
Speaker 2: It's not required.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, Hey, if you want to check out
Speaker 1: other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you know
Speaker 1: where to find us anywhere you get your podcasts. On
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays we have a core episode. On Mondays
Speaker 1: we do listener mail. On Wednesdays we usually do a
Speaker 1: short form artifact or a monster Fact episode. There will
Speaker 1: be a Monster Fact episode next week. And then on
Speaker 1: Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk
Speaker 1: about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 2: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 2: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 2: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 2: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: your Mind dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of Heart Radio.
Speaker 3: For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.