#AcademicsWithCats – Meet Kilian, desk cat in training

My last post was a little depressing really and the reaction to it showed how necessary it was to acknowledge that academia has a problem here – or maybe all sectors do, maybe our time in history is one characterised by poor mental health…. My next posts are likely to be conference related with the Socio-Legal Studies Association Annual conference coming up next week and the Association of Law Teachers following the week after. So this post is something completely different: Meet Kilian.

If you are on Twitter you might be familiar with  #academicswithcats and obviously you will understand that cats and academics go together. It feels like I have always had cats and that those cats have always supported my academic life in some way. It’s odd that I feel that way because actually I didn’t have a cat while I was a student at UG or M level. We got Ernest and Shackleton when I was a chunk into my PhD. Ernie was my PhD cat. He curled up with me, he ‘helped’ organise my literature, he listened to my ideas and thoughts and walked away in disgust on more than one occasion. Ernie-cat died recently and I miss him and our chats – one sided though they generally were. Shackleton is too busy manipulating the universe and being grumpy to be much of an academic cat. He also thinks I’m stupid  (he thinks everyone is stupid!) so trying to talk to him about work really doesn’t help.

Einstein – though I rescued him from a university campus 4 years ago, isn’t much interested in me. He’s very much Kath’s cat and he’s also not one for cuddles or curling up with us other than on very rare occasions. He likes sleeping in the sun relatively close to but not too close to us or Shackleton and chasing things outside. All. The. Time. And dreamies, he likes dreamies. He thinks I’m dull if I don’t have a piece of string in my hand. So our two older cats are not really academic companions. Imagine my delight then that Kilian, just over ten weeks old and with us since Saturday, appears to have already started his desk cat training!

I have always wanted a desk cat. Kilian started by locating my notes for my latest writing project and kicking the hell out of them, tearing them and chasing them across the living room floor. Then he perfected the ‘curl up under legs’ pose which allows contact as well as a laptop on knee when humans are not at their desk. Then he sent an email, turned the screen upside down and added 45 words to my chapter while shouting about the inadequacy of that particular paragraph. That seemed like a good start for an academic cat. This morning he tried the ‘curl up on knee while human sat at desk’ – a more tricky balancing act than anything that had come before and seemingly not really suitable. He quickly moved to ‘locate sunny patch on desk’ and is now perfecting ‘distract human while she’s on the phone’ with Kath. He is learning fast!

He has other qualities that I think will make him a lovely academic cat. He is very talkative and likes a conversation. I think maybe our chats will be less one-sided than the ones I had with Ernie. He is very good at pouncing on important pieces of paper thus indicating what I should be thinking about next and he’s not worried about deleting my rubbish by marching confidently across the keyboard. And for those moments where I get anxious and worried, he has the most amazing deep, loud purr which makes the world stop spinning for a split second and everything seem right. He also has a fairly distinctive ‘feed me’ meow which comes in handy when lost in work for hours as it will also serve as a reminder to feed myself!

Here’s to our little academic cat in training (which is quite tiring really)!