My cat is a god

Rediscovering the divine all around us

My cat is a god. Perhaps you are smiling and nodding. Odds are you or someone you know is also a sycophant of a feline deity. The godlike majesty of cats is not a new observation. Ancient Kemet (Egypt) revered the cat in the form of the goddess Bastet. In the modern world, however, we say it as a joke, poking fun at ourselves for how we dote on our furry little divinities. Yet here I mean it literally. My cat can be understood as a god, no mysticism or metaphysics required. This realization has shifted the way I perceive the world. It has helped me to be more respectful, grateful, and humble at a time when the world deeply needs our respect, gratitude, and humility.

This turn in perspective hinges on what it means to be a “god.” There is no objectively correct answer to this question. Different cultures have understood divinity differently for thousands of years. But I will explain how I arrived at my understanding. For starters, I do not mean God, with a capital “G”: the almighty, creator of heaven and Earth. But there are small “g” gods as well. The Britannica Dictionary defines a god as “a spirit or being that has great power, strength, knowledge, etc., and that can affect nature and the lives of people” or “one of various spirits or beings worshipped in some religions.” This can encompass the gods of well-known pantheons, such as Indra, Zeus, or Odin, but also less august spirits.

The expansive possibilities are evident in the Japanese concept of kami, which can denote many types of beings from the Abrahamic God to one’s ancestors to a significant rock. Religious studies scholar Nobutaka Inoue observes that “Many animals [were]... worshiped as kami or as beings in which kami were manifest.” In particular, animals might be seen as yorishiro, the body of a kami. Though the people of Kemet did not see animals themselves as divine, they did see them as embodying divine attributes; for example, Bastet combined the violent and protecting characteristics of cats.

Synthesizing such perspectives, I propose these characteristics of godhood:

• A god is an object, being, or spirit that is not human (in the sense of an ordinary, living human);

• A god sees or does things differently than a human;

• A god has a power humans lack;

• This power is something humans could be helped or harmed by;

• A god should be respected and propitiated to honor that power.

By this definition, my cat is a god. He is a non-human being who sees and does things differently than humans. As I stare at him staring at me, I often muse on what it must be like to perceive the world without the crutch of language, to look at me with an unmediated internalization of my presence, an experience I can scarcely even imagine. He easily meets these first two criteria. But does my cat have divine power?

Our dominant global culture is obsessed with power hierarchies. It relentlessly attempts to calculate which country, culture, race, sex, and so on is more powerful, with a tacit assumption that the more powerful has a right to dominate the less powerful. This attitude manifests all around us, from the explicit domination of the IMF and World Bank by the wealthiest nations to the persistence of rape cultures. In these power games, I am more powerful than my cat: I control what he eats, where he lives, and when he gets carted off to the vet despite his protestations. But a god need not be more powerful than a human, just differently powerful.

A case in point: in his mid-teens, my son would often express anger by shutting down. He would go silent, avoid eye contact, hole up in his room. Nothing I did could break through his ice wall: not small talk, not apologies, not even leaving him alone for a while. But sometimes, I would catch him in the hall, perhaps coming from the bathroom, and say, “Oh, look at how cute Kitty is being!” We would look at Kitty lying there on his back, four little white feet in the air, and my son would say, “Yeah,” and stoop down to rub Kitty’s tummy. I might say, “Maybe Kitty would like to hang out with you.” He would pick him up and take him back to his room, and the anger melted: everything back to normal. No one in our household has that power but the cat.

In ancient Rome, a center of everyday religious practice was the household gods or spirits, which protected and provided for the household. By extension, our cat is our household god. His presence restores our harmony, calms our fears, reminds us that alongside the fascism, genocide, and climate breakdown engulfing our world, there is still peace, play, and comfort. Just as the Romans practiced daily rituals to honor their household gods, so we honor ours with food and shelter, snuggles, warm laps, and cat toys. A happy cat makes a happy household.

When I view the world through these eyes primed for the divine, I see gods everywhere: in the trees that create the oxygen we breathe, the bees that make the fruits and vegetables grow, the wind that brings relief from the heat or the terror of wildfire. Of all material forces, however, none is more deserving of our worship than the sun. I am not talking about Apollo or Amaterasu, but the star itself, “a luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity.” The sun’s influence created the Earth. It will destroy the Earth. It powers the Earth, from daylight to solar panels, photosynthesis to fossil fuels. We owe everything to it. We owe it our reverence. We do not (yet) have the power to affect the the sun, but as capitalist imperialism rams us into accelerating global warming, we are rapidly learning the cost of disrespecting its power over us. I feel this every day I walk out into my arid garden in what used to be a temperate rain forest and stand in the sun’s searing power.

When I see the divinity in these forces, I understand why so many religions speak of both love and fear of the gods. I understand the need to tread with reverence on this Earth full of deities without whom we cannot live—and ones without whom we would live less fully. I become more oriented toward care and conscience. I overflow with gratitude to live in a world teeming with divine agency.

Photo credit Glenn Peters