What Can We Learn From A Cat Stuffing to a Game of Baseball?

Earlier this month, towards the end of a Yankees-Orioles game, a cat found its way onto the baseball diamond. Apparently this is something cats do. In April, a dirty gray one ran into Coors Field during the Dodgers-Rockies game. In 2017, St. During a game between the Louis Cardinals and the Kansas City Royals, a feral kitten rushed onto the field at Busch Stadium, just before a big slam gave the Cardinals victory; it was dubbed Rally Cat and later involved in a custody battle. In 2016, a big yellow cat crashed into a game between Cardinals and Angels. In 1984 there was the notorious Killer Kitten Attack, in which a cat knocking on the door bit the finger of the Seattle Kingdome lander who caught it, and before that, the legendary Cubs-Mets Black Cat Incident of 1969 took place. The black cat paced in front of the Cubs’ hideout, causing (according to some) Cubs to continue his losing streak.

But none of that dampens this month’s drama. In the game’s telecast, the cat is only a minor distraction at first. The camera spots him on the field and eventually one of the announcers, Kevin Brown, says to him, “Oh, this is New York.” But when the camera turns to the pitcher, there is confusion: Will they keep playing?

The cat is an amazing athlete. Watching it is like watching an Olympic event.

Sometimes, in a crisis, the brain cannot believe what it sees and everything proceeds as if it were normal. This is called the “incredibility reaction”. Once the cat is spotted, it takes some time for attention to shift from the game’s manufactured bets to the primary bets for the animal. The crowd starts cheering as the cat tries to find its way. The crowd roars when the cat jumps onto the outfield wall. Within a few minutes, the cat caught the attention of the fans in the stands, the fans at home, the cameramen, the field staff, the players, the announcers. The Orioles run to a door near the bullring and wait to come out, but the man sitting behind the door does nothing and the cat walks away in frustration. The crowd shouted, “Go cat, go!” ‘ he yells along. The ground guards run helplessly alongside the animal, which leaps back against the wall and then throws itself into the air in large vertical jumps. The crowd is getting wild.

Something about the cat: Very fast, very determined, very stubborn and tactical. He keeps trying different things to get what he wants, which is the hell out of this noisy, crowded, confusing place. The cat is also an incredible athlete. Watching it is like watching an Olympic event. The cat is a sprinter. A gravity-defying gymnast under stress. Unlike the cat at Coors Field in April, this cat doesn’t need to stop to breathe. Unlike Killer Kitten, she doesn’t resort to violence. The crowd cheers: “MVP, MVP” People cheer as the cat leaps out of a man’s legs as he dodges the goalkeepers or even when cornered. Finally someone opens a door and the cat runs in and the crowd is saddened to see it. “It was legally upsetting,” Brown says. “It’s fun but also sad. I never want to watch this again.”

But you want to watch it again. Who wouldn’t want to watch this little creature thrown into a situation much bigger than itself, rescued with much more grace, dignity, and poise than its predecessors? Exciting – more compelling than the game that everyone gathers to watch in the first place. A creature as defenseless and ordinary as this little cat has not only spoiled something as big and bloated as a major league baseball game, it has also caused everyone to rally around him in sympathy. Some reviewers on YouTube argued that this was the best part of the game; someone reported that everyone supported the animal at the bar he was watching in Maryland. Everyone loves the oppressed, even a cat.

Just as The cat video has been circulating the internet, as are several other videos where normal situations are wildly interrupted. passenger in one A Frontier Airlines flight, accused of drunkenly groping and assaulting flight attendants, was injured taped to his seat. In another, a woman’s After apparently trying to attack another customer at Victoria’s Secret in a mall in New Jersey and then realized it was recorded. The Frontier passenger was seen in the video shouting about her family’s net worth; The underwear customer finally collapsed to the floor, screaming and shaking. Remarkably, the people around him went about their business, paying for their purchases quietly.

Neither of these situations was unprecedented. The combatant was not the first to be taped to his seat. Also, “Victoria’s Secret Karen” isn’t the first to confuse victimization with victimhood. However, each comes at a time when business owners and retail employees report customers being unusually abusive. It’s hard not to think that there could be a significant imbalance – a human rush of behaving as usual, stuck in global crises that their brains seemingly refuse to take into account. This theater of entitlement, confusion, raw anger, and emerging mental health issues will only concern us all as more and more weary spectators.

The cat has no sense of being destructive because it has no sense of living in a society.

Perhaps in their own minds, these people see themselves as cats – with their initial disregard for the game, the players, the fans, the announcers and the audience. Perhaps they will relate to the cat’s behavior under these circumstances, imagining themselves as individuals against the world, victimized by their rules, using their gifts of agility, cunning, and self-preservation, no matter what field guards try to trap them. True, my first thought when I saw the cat was that we could all learn something from him and his ability to show such grace even in the most surprising circumstances. There is something beautiful about motivation, competence, and self-determination.

But the cat is pure subjectivity and pure identity. There is no sense of being destructive because there is no sense of living in a society. It does not perceive itself as surrounded by or contradictory to a system, just as it does not consider how the system can support or protect it. Announcers have no way of interpreting expressions of concern. Suddenly trapped in the highly structured, rule-following, and socially interactive context of a baseball game, it is an animal notorious for controlling its surroundings.

As I watched this cat’s ordeal, I became more aware of something else encouraging: the collective reaction of the crowd. A stadium full of people, benignly putting aside plans to take care of something else, united in interest and sympathy for a single animal. The cat was great, but does an entire stadium act like a society, like a civilization? This might be the better part to watch.