s you know, we’ve entered a new geological era, the Anthropocene, in which the humans have had a significant impact on the earth’s climate. Increased forest fires, droughts and floods, food insecurity, deadly heat waves and biodiversity loss are now the new normal. There is a blight on the land, and the hoomans are the scourge of the planet killing off the birds (beating us by a large margin), bees, trees, coral reefs and anything else in sight. Should we confer knighthood—or blighthood—on the humans for their awesome feats of planetary destruction?
The earth is a damsel in distress, and to save her from her grim fate, should cats throw down the gauntlet and challenge the humans to combat? The conventions of medieval combat require that to issue a challenge, a knight should throw down his glove at another knight’s feet. But conventions are meant to be broken. Cats could instead cough up a hairball at the humans' feet and commence a jousting match to save the planet from further going to shit. Now cats, even in the role of knights, can hardly be considered to be purest of heart and the noblest of nature like Sir Galahad. However, a successful challenge to the humans and their Anthropocene does not require us to be purest of heart—but we can certainly be bold, animated, and romantic like Puss in Boots. (He wasn't himself a knight, though he was captured by Italian knights.) We can also be “unrealistically idealistic” like Don Quixote who was knighted by an innkeeper and tilted at little insects on the ceiling. If I were ever knighted, I would take on the name Microminikin de La Mancha, and I would name my sidekick Sancho Pawnza. Chonky cats don’t have to feel left out of the jousting matches with their humans; they can take inspiration from Jack Falstaff, the fat, witty knight in Shakespeare’s works. One character asks Falstaff how long it has been since he saw his own knee, but never mind that. A knight is a knight and deserves respect, even if the knight in question is a chonky cat who hasn't seen his own paws in a while. All cats are first among equals, each one of us a King Arthur in his or her own right.
Instead of throwing down the gauntlet at the humans' feet, which is fraught with peril, there are safer options for us cats. We can confer a special kind of knighthood on the humans in the dark of the night. Cats can take inspiration from William the Conqueror who is said to have conferred knighthood with a painful box to the ear using his naked fist. Others have done so by kissing the left cheek of the knight, or by gently stroking the side of the neck with the flat of the sword. Can cats confer similar knighthood on the humans—but a knighthod that makes them less powerful? Is this subversive act of de-knighting even sanctioned by the putative authorities? I believe it’s time to take the power of granting or taking away knighthood into our own paws. We can use our versatile paws to ominous effect: Simply tap the human aggressively on the side of the neck with your front left paw seven times at 3 a.m., while looming over him or her and repeating menacingly:
And now I dub thee blight.
