Journal of Matters Relating to Felines - Winter 2021

Miirage Issland In the waters surrounding the coast of Suffolk is an iron structure standing tall shrouded in the frosted mists of the North Sea. The two towers of this floating fortress are bridged by a platform and was constructed as a naval point of defence providing a physical deterrence to the possibility of nautical invasion and was supplied with anti-aircraft capabilities during the Second World War. However, if you was to traverse the seafaring route to the site today, you would bear witness to the very same structure being lapped by the moving cerulean and notice a flag of red, white and black billowing in the salted wind. This is the micronation of Sealand.

The original name of this construction was H.M Rough and was one of many erected along the sea. The final maintenance personnel of the seaborne forts abandoned them in 1956 for them to be consumed by the elements. Yet, no-one could have predicted the rise of ‘pirate radio’; wholly independent radio stations illegally operated by individuals and organisations without government restriction. The 1960s’ saw a proliferation of this practice, with the popularity driven principally by broadcasting the media that the British Broadcasting Corporation refused.

These ‘radio pirates’ would often operate in abandoned buildings that had not seen a visitor for years, unused barns on windswept fields in the furthest reaches of the countryside, and eventually transmitting their rogue media on boats at sea. These sites were particularly attractive locations for radio broadcasting due to their immediate distance from anyone, especially the authorities, and had the capacity to store all necessary radio equipment. One of these pirates was former military officer, Patrick Roy Bates, who occupied the mentioned iron tower in the sea in 1968. Bates was previously convicted of operating an unauthorised radio station on the British mainland and, upon receiving legal advice, established Sealand as it stands today.

This was possible through the principle of ‘jus gentium’, that land can legally come under a new occupant’s ownership after an extended period of abandonment by the original inhabitant. Regarding Sealand, formally H.M Rough, the British state had vacated the premises twelve years at this point, providing the legal strength behind Bate’s claim. The founding of this new micronation took place on the 2 nd of September 1968, with Bates gifting his wife, Joan, the title of ‘Princess of Sealand’ before crowning himself ‘Prince of Sealand’, founding their own marine principality.

News of this freshly established territory was covered extensively in the media which caught the attention of the British government. Due to the advance communism and the strengthening grip of the Soviet Union during this period in history, the Palace of Westminster speculated that Sealand had the potential of becoming a grave security risk, with some going as far to label the micronation as a possible ‘new Cuba’ on the coast of England. The existence of this micronation was considered to possess an excessive risk and the British government drafted plans to see the demolition of all the abandoned naval towers, with the ultimate goal being the tearing down of Sealand.

A ship hosting the Royal Navy arrived on the strait, accompanied by a helicopter carrying a bounty of explosives. As the days passed, the line the towers shorted one by one, tumbling into the sea after an enormous explosion. This path of destruction continued until Sealand was a lonesome structure in the water that now commanded the full attention of the offensive front. Charred flotsam littered the waters lapping Sealand’s towers as the demolition crew moved in.

At this moment Sealand was being inhabited by Michael and Jane, son and daughter of Bates, who were the subject of a barrage of abuse and threats in an attempt to get them to voluntarily flee the structure, since the site could not legally brought down with people being on it. With the ship docking, Michael, in an act of bravery, fired a warning shot into the air with a rifle to send a clear signal of his authority over this nautical place. With that one act, the Royal Navy’s demolition operation collapsed in an instant, with both the ship and the helicopter performing an immediate retreat.

Consequentially, Bates and his son were summoned before British courts on firearms charges, but they managed to escape the jaws of the prison system through a landmark ruling. The case against them was dismissed on the grounds of Sealand being outwith the United Kingdom’s territorial waters. This meant that English law did not apply on Sealand and that no crime was committed, due to a lack of a legal system on the seaborne settlement. This ruling provided the legal basis for the existence of Sealand as a legitimate micronation, with a legal basis having vigorous existential strength and possessing value akin to antiquarian gems.

In the decades that followed, Bates designed and produced various features common to nation states like Sealand’s flag of red and black with a diagonal white dividing stripe and a heraldic crest, which is a shield coloured in the micronation’s flag with knight helm sitting upon it, flanked by two aquatic lions whose crowned manes fall onto scaled fishtails. Currency for Sealand was also minted; coins of copper, silver and gold emblazoned with the crest and the orca whale, as well as all-black passports titled ‘Sealand’ accompanied with the mentioned crest.

Sealand has experienced a revival of interest in recent years and one can purchase a variety of themed merchandise from their official website.

Items for sale include the expected, like t-shirts, flags, keyrings and mugs, but unique curiosities are also on offer. For a fee, you can become a Lord/Lady, Baron/Baroness, Duke/Duchess or receive a knighthood to give yourself the honorific of Sir/Dame. Other wares of interest include a Sealand identity card similar to those on the European continent, a copy of the Sealand constitution, stamps, and a framed declaration that you own a parcel of the land present on the sea fort. You can also purchase the book ‘Holding the Fort’ by Bates’ son Michael in which details the history of the floating micronation in a much more comprehensive than what is penned here.

Prince Patrick sadly passed away in 2012, with Princess Joan joining her husband in eternity in 2016. Michael, the very same that defended the country all those years ago, has inherited the title of Prince of Sealand. I contacted the monarch and he was kind enough to compose the following words detailing the life of Fruitcake, the first cat of Sealand.

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*** ‘‘My family have always liked cats and I grew up around them. My father was sitting in the RSPCA Southend-on-Sea Essex way back in the early sixties looking for a rescue dog for my grandfather whose dog had sadly been run over in an accident.

A woman opposite him was holding a basket on her lap which was pitching violently from side to side. Dad asked her, ‘‘What do you have in there? A tiger?’’ ‘‘A nightmare kitten.’’ said the lady, ‘‘It’s up and down the curtains and wrecking my house. I’m at my wits end. So, I’m here to have her put down. I can’t cope anymore.’’ The lady opened the basket to show him the monster lurking behind the wicker cover. Large, golden, yellow eyes stared out at the old man. He was instantly ‘smitten’. ‘‘I’ll have her.’’ he said, snatching the furry bundle from her grasp. And that is how ‘Fruitcake’ came to be a great part of my young life. She was, I have been told, a ‘farmhouse’ cat, with dark and orange colouring with a golden bib under her chin, gifting her the general colouring of a fruitcake.

We didn’t have a garden at home. To compensate, my dad bought a beach hut at Thorpe bay in Essex. We used it all the year round and often would take Fruitcake to the beach with us on cold, stormy winter days. A product of my generation, I was shipped off to boarding school in North Wales when I was about ten and every school holiday, two or three days before I was due home, Fruitcake, my mother told me, would go up to my room in the attic ready to welcome me home. It was uncanny how she knew.

It was about this time that my father got involved with the ‘pirate radio’ phenomenon. He had taken over the ‘Knock John’ forts way out in the Thames estuary to broadcast his station ‘Radio Essex’ to the masses. It was exciting times. I was home for my Christmas holidays when dad announced we were going to stay in the fort for a week or so and mum was going to cook the staff of engineers and the DJ’s Christmas dinner. It sounded great fun. ‘‘What about Fruitcake?’’ asked mother, ‘‘We can’t just leave her here alone with no one to look after her.’’ Dad stroked his chin as he ruminated for an answer to the problem. ‘‘I know!’’ he announced, ‘‘We will take her with us.’’ So that’s how Fruitcake ended up far out at sea on Christmas Day 1965. I don’t think she was very impressed with the trip on a smelly old fishing boat, even though the old man had given her a sedative to keep her calm that he had got from our local vet. When we got up onto the fort, the first thing dad did was pick her up and show her not to jump up on the rail in case she tumbled over the side into the sea far below. I can still see her shocked face as she strolled around the fortress and nearly put her foot through a small hole in the deck that was originally for pipework, the white topped waves rolling around far below. She settled in and seemed to enjoy the time with family and staff and there were no problems on the way home. 1967 saw our intrepid moggy once more at sea on the same old fishing boat heading out to Sealand, our new home further out into the North Sea. This time there were no sedatives, the boat trip was twice as long and she spent a month with just our little family over Christmas.

She lived a long life for a cat and when it came time to meet her maker she made sure she waited for me to come home before taking her last breath as I came through the door. We buried her under a rose bush and when I moved we took the bush with us. We now have another ‘Fruitcake’ in the family since that little lady and she has that same tremendous character.’’

Composed by, Prince Michael of Sealand. Foreward by Maurice Alexander, Undergraduate of Business Management at the University of Aberdeen

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Inn the Miind of Heemingway There are two categories of people in the world: cat lovers and dog lover. Several famous cat lovers influenced the world we live in today and our culture as societies. One of the most famous writers that were obsessed with those furry friends was Ernest Hemingway.

Before jumping into the author’s accomplishments, you might enjoy knowing that his property was filled with a population of polydactyl cats.

Polydactyl cats have an anomaly called polydactyly which causes cats to born with more than the usual number of toes on one or more of its paws.

It touches their front paws and appears less frequently on the back paws, and his very rare on all four. Those cats genetically inherited this trait and are mostly found along the East Coast of North America in the United States and Canada, and also in the South West of England and Wales.

Around forty to fifty cats, referred to as Hemingway cats lived on his property in Key West in Florida and are six-toed. The story of Hemingway and his polydactyl cats started with a kitten called Snow White. Snow White was a gift given by the captain Stanley Dexter given to the author in the 1930s. The captain believed they brought good luck, that the extra toes made them better hunters and that it provided better balance to the ship on rough seas. To this day, the descendants of Snow White live on the property of Hemingway’s home.

Ernest Miller Hemingway is an American novelist and journalist from Illinois. He deeply influenced the American and British fiction of the 20th century thanks to his succinct prose and realist vision of the world he lives in. He also develops the “iceberg theory” where the true message of the narrative lays underneath the plot.

Hemingway is an important figure of history: after high school, he did not proceed into higher education and started working for the Star, a newspaper based in Kansas City, in 1917. When the First World War happened, he was not able to join the army as a soldier because of a defective but he managed to participate to the war effort by joining the American Red Cross as an ambulance driver. He was injured during the war on the 8th of July 1918 when he was not even 19 yet. He got decorated for his acts of bravery and hospitalized in Milan. There, he fell in love with a nurse who declined to marry him. Those experiences at a young age truly changed him and influenced his future writing.

He went back to America after that and started working odd jobs in Chicago while starting to write again. He then went to France as a correspondent for the Toronto Star. In Paris, he encountered other American writers like Fitzgerald who pushed him to pursue his non-journalistic writing. Thus, in 1924, his collection of stories titled In Our Time was released in Paris, and published in 1925 in New York City. He knows his first big success with the publication of the novel The Sun also rises in 1926. This novel underlines the pessimistic feeling of the “Lost Generation” a phrase made famous by Hemingway. More generally, the Lost Generation refers to the post-World War I generation, those who came out of age during the war.

It is more particularly describing American writers and artists who came to live and work in Paris.

The success of his first novel put Hemingway under the spotlight which he desperately wanted for his career, he wanted to be known for his writing and successful but he also hated the attention. He occupies his post-war year with the writing of several short stories which he becomes renown for and with a lot of travels although still living in Paris. In 1929, he publishes A Farewell to Arms, a novel which overshadowed his shorter fictions. This novel is truly inspired by his life during the war, his life as a young soldier in Italy who falls in love. With A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway develops his style as an author, a lyrical but quite dark mixing war narratives and love story, making a powerful narrative.

Hemingway is fascinated by the war and it stays a point of focus throughout his narratives. It started with A Farewell to Arms which depicts the pointlessness of the war where the main character loses everything dear to him. With later works like For Whom the Bell Tolls published in 1940, Hemingway uses his love and knowledge about Spain to talk about the Spanish Civil War. For Whom the Bell Tolls is composed of dialogue, flashbacks and different stories which permit to Hemingway to give a vivid portraiture of Spain at that time and the different characters involved.

Moreover, it gives a detailed narrative of the cruelty and inhumanity created by the civil war. Unlike A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls focuses on the comradeship during the war.

Then, when the Second World War progresses, Hemingway goes to London as a journalist. He is involved with the Royal Air Force and crossed the English Channel with American troops on the 6th of June 1944. He saw a lot of what happened in Normandy and during the Battle of the Bulge which is the bloodiest battle for the US forces during World War II. He then participated in the liberation of Paris (19 th to the 25th of August 1944) which ends the occupying of the French capital. Although he did not fight, he impressed soldiers by being a man of courage in the battle and a man of knowledge in military matters, guerrilla activities and intelligence collection.

After the war, he returns to his home to Cuba and starts working on his writing again. He travels a lot during this period and is injured during a plane crash to a trip to Africa. Shortly after, in 1953, he receives the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for The Old Man and the Sea published in 1952. It is a short heroic novel about an old Cuban fisherman who knows extended struggle until he dies eaten by a shark during the long voyage home. This book plays an important role in Hemingway gaining the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 which was praised by critics and the public. This was much needed for Hemingway since his previous novel Across the River and into the Trees published in 1950 had been damned by the critics. This novel about an army officer who dies while on leave in Venice is built on successive layers of symbolism, following on the “iceberg theory”. Only a few contemporary critics praised the novel which deeply wounded Hemingway, especially since most people close to him agreed with the majority of critics, like his wife Mary who said: “I kept my mouth shut. Nobody had appointed me my husband’s editor”. Thankfully, later literary scholars consider the novel better than the contemporary reception: Carlos Baker even compares it to The Tempest by Shakespeare, both being not major works for the authors but on with an “elegiac tone”. Likewise, Jeffrey Meyers considers Across the River and into the Trees as a turning point for Hemingway with the new confessional mode that is present in the work. Critics believe that the new structure made Hemingway’s style

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more comprehensible for the modern reader. For Across the River and into the Trees, Hemingway was influenced by the Nouveau Roman: a type of French novel of the 1950s that diverged from other classical literary genres.

By the 1960s, Hemingway went back to the United States, he tried to live his life and do his work, everything was good for him for a while until his anxiety and depression took over. He is hospitalized twice in Minnesota because of it and receives electroshock treatments because of it.

Electroconvulsive therapy became highly popular in the US in the 1940s, it is a psychiatric treatment in which seizures are provoked to the patient to provide relief from mental disorders like major depressive disorder, mania and schizophrenia. Its use is highly controversial. Two days after returning to his home in Idaho, Hemingway takes his life with a shotgun on the 2 nd of July 1961. Hemingway left behind him several manuscripts some of which has been published like A Moveable Feast, published in 1964, a memoir of his years in Paris before he was a famous author.

Hemingway still lives in his writings with characters who embody his values and view of life. In The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls, the main character is a young man who is strong, will-powered and self-confident who is still affected and sensitive towards the events he has lived during wartime. For Hemingway, war is a key theme and issue. For him, it was a strong symbol of the world: complex, morally ambiguous, that inevitably caused pain, hurt and destruction. His characters are created around the idea that to survive such a world and have a chance of survival, the characters had to act with honour, bravery and dignity. This set of principles is known as the “Hemingway code”: it is a particular set of qualities, way of acting that his given to characters to be considered as heroic figures, it is what Hemingway calls “grace under pressure”, it is a kind of victory against the instinct of preservation and theme widely studied in The Old Man and the Sea. Finally, Hemingway is a key-author of the 20th century with his style being the most imitated. He made his prose truly authentic, trying to erase any language inessentials, erasing all traces of verbosity or embellishment and sentimentality. His goal was to be objective and as honest as possible. Hemingway’s style was fresh, simple and natural. His narratives are composed by descriptions of series of actions. He uses short and simple sentences with no comments or emotional rhetoric involved. It makes a concentrated, concrete and unemotional prose but is often resonant with the repetition and rhythm given with a few adverbs and adjectives used. This detached quality can also bring irony through understatement when talking of subjects like the war, death and pain. His innovative style influenced novels worldwide, especially those written from the 1930s through the 1950s.

Nevertheless, Hemingway was an interesting persona by itself through his contradictory character. He knew fame quite rapidly, a fame that was surpassed by few American authors of the 20th century. His cold fashion, masculine, virile way of writing, echoing with what he experienced during the war is a coating for a much more delicate and sensible aesthetic with particular attention given to details. He was what we can call a celebrity at a young age and his popularity and fame are still validated today by critics and scholars, which makes him probably one of the most famous cat lovers for the past two centuries.

Composed by, Cécile Fardoux, Undergraduate of English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Aberdeen

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Fiinal Wiinters

I will start by telling you an inconvenient truth: humanity is on the verge of extinction. Human-caused global warming is a physical reality that cannot be denied, its effects can be seen in the warming of the oceans, the land surface and the lower atmosphere. This is the cause of the altered rainfall patterns, the megadroughts, the melting of Arctic ice and the rise of sea levels- which by the way, is the reason why countries you have never heard of in the media, like Palau and Kiribati, are already starting to disappear leaving millions without a home. It is frightening to think that more than 50% of the Earth’s corals have been lost, not only because of their immense beauty but also because they consume a third of the World’s CO2. They are a stabilising force in our climate that can no longer do their job fast enough to sustain us and our beloved felines.

In a world where you will be able to sail over the North pole in 2040, the international system’s response is the Paris Agreement. The Agreement signified the culmination of years of arduous negotiations under the intense pressure to prevent the reiterated failure of other previous environmental treaties. The Paris Agreement establishes the objective of keeping the increase of the global average temperature to below 2°C with respect to pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C. To achieve this, the emission of worldwide greenhouse gases (GHGs) must be dramatically reduced. The Agreement’s method of achieving this goal is through a bottom-up approach of unilateral pledges known as National Determined Contributions (NDC). In other words, each country must set its own voluntary objectives.

However, the World’s current situation is critical. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that if the global net human-caused emissions of CO2 do not fall by 45 per cent from levels by 2030, reaching net zero in 2050, it is unlikely that the Paris Agreement will reach its goal. More importantly, if the temperature of the Earth increases by more than 3°C, a tipping point of no return would be triggered, pushing our planet into an imminent state of mass extinction.

The Agreement commits parties to hold the increase in the global average temperature well below 2°C and obliges countries to submit NDCs at a regular interval of five years, which in turn are expected to surpass the NDCs ambitions of previous ones. Another opportunity presented in the Agreement is that in contrast with previous accords, it includes all countries in its mitigation efforts. Whereas, for example, the Kyoto Treaty placed obligations to reduce GHG emissions only on industrialised nations. Still, the Paris Agreement retains a certain degree of differentiation between developed and developing countries. Developed ‘shall continue taking the lead by undertaking economy-wide absolute emission reduction targets’, developing countries ‘should continue enhancing their mitigation efforts’ and are only ‘encouraged’ to move over time towards the kind of emissions reduction or limitation targets that apply to the industrialised countries. Moreover, the Agreement mandates that in order to help developing countries meet their commitments, developed countries must provide financial resources to aid them. It was decided that developed countries would collectively contribute US$ 100 billion a year by 2020 and that the parties would continue assembling this sum until 2025.

Now, let us explore where the Paris Agreement so categorically fails. One of its most notable obstacles is the fact that there has been limited guidance on the formulation of NDCs. This has caused NDCs varying in content, which more than often lack details concerning their aims. Indeed, as NDCs come from numerous countries, the quality and quantity of the information released is extremely irregular. In fact, they range from three to 57 pages. Paradoxically, the quality of the information of the NDCs is inversely proportional to the level of income of the country, leading medium-low and low-income states to offer higher than average quality of information. They mostly correspond to African states and small islands where climate change presents the greatest threat. In a global context, only 18.5% of the NDCs are offering general information of high quality, and only 12.7% as far as finance is concerned. The richest countries in the World, OECD member states, tend to provide poor data about the funding of their policies, calling into question the leading role of the developed countries.

Another major challenge to the Paris Agreement is the tensions over climate finance. The US$ 100 billion commitment of financial mobilisation from developed countries to help developing ones has not been absent of flaws. The agreement recognises the significance of financial aid for vulnerable states. However, the Agreement does not prescribe which developing countries are vulnerable and how to prioritise funding among them. This has led to the financial commitment of developed countries to be open to their own interpretation, leaving vulnerable countries in a susceptible and dependent position. The climate fund simply falls short. For example, 14 out of 51 low-income countries require US$31.2 billion just for their forestry and land-use sectors, and only five of the above countries account for 77% of the total sum. The fund is clearly insufficient for developing countries’ needs. Furthermore, the Agreement does not provide any liability or compensation for vulnerable countries damaged by environmental disasters, a decision introduced by the United States. This unequivocally affects the poor who are pressured to self-sustain in the face of adversity.

However, the biggest failure of the Agreement is the fact that the majority of the countries subscripted to it are not honouring their pledged NDCs and the United Kingdom is no exception. As a great number of scientific reports are showing that keeping the increase of the global average temperature to below 2 °C is unlikely, not to say impossible, and achieving the 1.5 °C target is simply unfeasible. Experts believe that in the bestcase-scenario, annual World emissions would increase by 19.3% in 2030. If this level remains constant between 2030 and 2050, the world temperature will increase by at least 3 °C. To make matters worse, new scientific studies are indicating that even at under a 2°C temperature rise, vast areas of Africa, Europe, North America and South America are at a high risk of flooding, and even with a 1.5°C temperature increase, highly populated regions in South Asia and India are at great risk.

The Paris Agreement Accord is fragile, and its main objectives are unlikely to be achieved. However, not everything is lost. There is still hope, our only hope, the mobilisation of civil society. Fighting climate change is not merely in the hands of a few politicians that have already failed us; you are a key player in this global struggle. Social movements are key drivers for change. When civil society is organised, change happens. This is what history has taught us with the abolishment of slavery, the suffragettes, the independence of India, and the civil rights movement. We all have a responsibility to set an example before it is too late. On what side of history will you be? That is the question.

Composed by, Tomás Pizarro-Escuti, Undergraduate of History and International Relations at the University of Aberdeen

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Maaternal Noourishment It goes without saying that in nature, one of the most beautiful bonds is that between mothers and their offspring. Most humans, when confronted with the sweet and intimate bond between animals and their offspring, respond with strong positive emotions and affection for the sight. One prominent example of this phenomenon is the stream of videos and compilations of cats nursing their kittens that us humans have collected online.

The most popular video on YouTube of a mother cat feeding her kittens has nearly 5 million views and the average compilation, thousands. This is of course an understandable reaction to seeing the mother-infant bond in action and I am certain this is something many of us animal lovers can relate to.

Contrastingly, the sight of a woman publicly breast-feeding her child is often deemed as indecent, sexual and even dirty to name just a few of the common reactions our generation has to this innocent act. How have we as humans managed to compartmentalise the phenomenon of nursing into opposing categories of good and beautiful when another species does it, but dirty and indecent when our own kind does? There is an obvious and disconcerting explanation for this that our society refuses to confront. The explanation is that women’s breasts have been sexualised to such an extent that we are no longer willing to accept them for their natural purpose. A simple google search will lead you to countless articles online that question why the UK has some of the lowest breastfeeding rates in the world. Yet, most articles fail to mention or perhaps intentionally omit the fact that arguably, the UK is one of the worst places in the world for sexualising women's breasts. Mainstream newspapers like The Sun and The Daily Star had a 50 year, yes, a 50-year ‘tradition’ of sexualising women’s bodies by displaying topless women on both the front cover and following pages of the paper. It was only last year that the Daily Star stopped this disgusting, degrading and perverted practice, much to the dismay of the misogynists that relished in it. The Sun even featured 16-year-old girls topless, in degrading positions, multiple times. Of course, they received little to no backlash for this. At every corner of the internet, you can find women's breasts being sexualised, whether that be in pornography, advertisements, movies or in social media content uploaded by female users who self-objectify. In real life, passersby (including children) will be familiar with the sight of lingerie shops that display pictures of half-naked women and sell an array of adornments designed to further sexualise breasts. Standard women's clothing is by no means exempt from this problem, with a large proportion of women’s tops being fashioned in a way that specifically aims to accentuate the bust. Finally, we can’t ignore the existence bikinis which exist to conceal breasts, as they are viewed by the public as too sexual to display on beaches. Paradoxically, male chests, nipple and all, are fully permitted.

Anyone with decent enough perception should be able to see that the objectification of women’s bodies has permeated most parts of society.

However, I would argue that University campuses provide one of the most silently toxic breeding grounds for this form of sexism. University confession pages on Facebook have sprung up across the UK. These pages are essentially gossip sites where students can submit anonymous confessions. This can range from innocent confessions regarding student complaints, all the way to confessions from men about how much they want a woman’s breasts on their face. Here is a post taken from Aberdeen’s resident confession page, Abercrush, which has well over 2000 ‘likes’, ‘‘******* ****** (name blurred for anonymity) who I danced with in ATIK last night, your tits drive me wild and all I want is to feel that nipple piercing against my face.’’ This is just one of the many examples of sexual harassment regarding women's breasts that are posted on these pages.

During my own investigation, I found many more examples of this, some of which were too explicit to state in this article. These campus confession sites not only encourage sexual harassment, but they also contribute to making campus and society in general, an unwelcoming and potentially unsafe place for mothers to breast-feed their children. It is almost ironic to me that many public places, including our own university, have signs and stickers encouraging women to breast-feed. We must stop and ask, with how prevalent pornography and the casual sexualisation of women's bodies are in our society, how many women would feel comfortable openly breastfeeding their children?

You might be thinking at this point, ‘‘But breasts are sexual if they weren't why do men feel so aroused by looking at them?’’ The idea that breasts are inherently sexual is prevalent, yet a total myth. Breasts have not been viewed as sexual throughout all of history nor are they viewed sexually in all cultures. Take for example the anthropological perspective offered by cultural anthropologist Katherine Dettwyle. Katherine recounted telling friends in Mali about sexual foreplay involving breasts. The women regarded this as ‘‘unnatural, perverted behaviour, and found it difficult to believe that men would become sexually aroused by women’s breasts, or that women would find such activities pleasurable’’. The only constant attitude or fact about breasts throughout history and across all cultures is that breasts exist to feed babies. To reiterate, breasts exist to feed babies, not to gratify male sexual desire. Women’s breast and the labour of breast-feeding have played one of the largest roles in the continuation of humanity. Absolutely everyone has benefitted from the nourishment a mother’s breasts provide in some capacity and we ought to all be grateful.

With breast-feeding playing such a central role in all our lives, it is that much more alarming that there exists such a pervasive stigma surrounding it.

Perhaps, if women weren't being fed the false narrative that their breasts are sexually exciting ornaments that exist to excite men, then we would see higher levels of openness to breastfeeding. If men weren't being socialised via the likes of pornography into perving and luring at women's breasts, women could breast-feed openly without shame, embarrassment or fear that men will call the police on them (this happens more often than you would think). I have even heard comments from young men and women who think that breastfeeding is disgusting and perverted. Just shows how bent reality has become when a beautiful, nurturing and loving act between mother and child has been warped into what some think is a dirty act of paedophilia.

Composed by, Peri Dalkic, Undergraduate of Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen

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Aiiluromancy Perhaps the most mystical animal, cats are estimated by one anonymous expert to be around 300% more magical than the average mammal.

Consequently, there has been a prolonged superstition around cats which stretches back throughout their whole history alongside humans and has manifested in many different ways. Spooky and spine-tingling events seem to follow our relationship with cats throughout the ages and exploring them we can learn something about the way our species interface with each other, and the ‘brain’ of human society. In contrast to the well-known sacred treatment of cats in ancient Egypt – which was not without its pitfalls - Medieval Europe was a hotbed of superstition and suspicion about the real motives of cats.

In our minds, the oppressive foggy darkness of Medieval Europe emanates a gothic atmosphere which is easy to imagine superstitious beliefs taking hold within. Post-Roman Europe could be imagined as a totalitarian theocracy; its population living within a hierarchical society under the domination of the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Church, with the Pope inheriting the title of Supreme Priest - Pontifex Maximus - from the Emperors of the Roman Empire. In this regard, the head of the Church inherited overall spiritual authority over the people of Christendom – largely based in the land of the former Roman Empire. In this way, a great degree of physical power was allotted to the Pope, who laid a claim of spiritual authority over so many kingdoms that all but the most powerful rulers could hope to defend themselves from the forces the Pope could array against them in a Crusade – if they demonstrated disloyalty to the spokesman of God on Earth.

However, despite the power of the Church in this period, it is important to note that Christian theology did not penetrate as deeply into the folklore of Europe as one might assume, using a typical 'top-down' perspective. Despite the relative power of the Pope, there was a great limit before widespread literacy and early mass communication technology such as the printing press, to the transmission of ideas across a population. While essentially all citizens who were able attended Church on Sundays, the use of Ecclesiastical Latin would have also served as a barrier to the understanding of many common people of the ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’ of Christian doctrine. With this considered, it is easier to understand why so many pre-Christian folkloric beliefs continued after the Christianization of Europe. The totalitarian theocracy that many imagine was more of a factor than a characterization of daily life for common people. While the Pope’s power has great he mostly dealt with elites on the international political level, and the great grinding infrastructure of the Church was reactively mobilized against heresy, conduction inquisitions in certain areas based on damning reports – it did not filter out a myriad of technical 'heresies' from the beliefs of the population. Even in the early modern period - which is understood to begin in the middle of the second millennium - clergymen were astounded to find people who believed in spirits who lived in their local river, varying ideas of what heaven was like, and many other folkloric variables built on top of their Christian faith.

With this understood its no wonder the amount of spooky and strange beliefs that circulated the towns and villages of medieval Europe about all manner of things. For example, belief in unicorns was widespread all through the Middle Ages and into the Early Modern period. The throne of Denmark was constructed out of ‘unicorn horn’ in 1672, and powdered unicorn horn was sold as medicine as late as 1741. This magical substance making up the creatures’ horn was known as ‘alicorn’, a market which was sadly slandered in the 1600s as physicians such as Ole Worm determined it to be a false product derived from narwhal and other types of animal tusk. The medieval merchant and explorer Marco Polo who famously travelled along the Silk Road from Venice to the empire of Kublai Khan, sighted unicorns for himself. He wrote describing them as "scarcely smaller than elephants. They have the hair of a buffalo and feet like an elephant. They have a single large black horn in the middle of the forehead...

They have a head like a wild boar’s… They spend their time by preference wallowing in mud and slime. They are very ugly brutes to look at.

They are not at all such as we describe them when we relate that they let themselves be captured by virgins, but clean contrary to our notions."

Curiously Polo describes in detail that their horn is not used 'to attack' but instead this beast kneels on its victims and 'lacerates' them with a spiky tongue. It is interesting to speculate about Marco Polo’s meeting of the 'unicorn'. It's evident from his travels and the way he earned the favour of the Khan that he was a very intelligent man. Perhaps he learned from locals after immediately assuming the rhinoceroses could be unicorns that they were normal non-magical animals but kept this idea in the text for the extra 'clout' from his European audience, or even convinced himself these bulky beasts were unicorns after returning to Europe and describing them to people. However, he decided upon writing them in this way, perhaps this text of the late 1200s contributed to the European belief in unicorns continuing as awkwardly late into history as 1741.

Medieval European beliefs about cats are incredible in their range and ambition. A whole magical field known as ailuromancy existed based on using the behaviour of cats to predict the future and tap into other magics which they were assumed to harness. Some of these ‘cat reading’ beliefs are quirky and seemingly innocent such as the belief that ‘if a cat washes behind its ears, it will rain’, but some have potentially deep and dark implications for those who believed them, such as ‘if a cat leaves a house for good, illness will always reign there’. The darkest beliefs about cats came from their association with witchcraft and ultimately, the devil. This probably came from the nocturnal aspect of the cat, combined with its seemingly magical abilities – the supple movement and ‘flight’ of a cat could be seen as having an eerie quality to it, combined with eyes that flash in the night. Activity at night should not be underestimated as a factor. In the medieval mind the fact that you would often discover cats ‘going about their business’ at night after seemingly acting lazy and aloof all day, staring at you with glowing eyes, could be very worrying. This was a world which swung on the agricultural rhythm sleeping and rising early and getting up to mischief at night was inherently creepy for many people. In a world in which animals were sometimes put on trial for crimes as if they had human minds with free will, this was not guaranteed to be understood as a morally neutral 'evolved behaviour' as it would be today. The fact cats have some wildness left in them was met with suspicion by some – like the heretic, the cat is of the ‘other side’, but living with us tame people, as if one of us, but not.

Pope Gregory IX reigned at a time of increased paranoia about rising heresy in Christendom. Honorius III and Innocent III, the last two Popes before him, had both called crusades, and the popular imagination of the devil had grown from an almost comedic vagrant type character to something hideously powerful, and ever-present on – even master of – the earth. By this point, cats had gained an association with the three worst fears and anxieties of the medieval population – Jews, Satanists, and Satanist Jews; as well as with loose women and witches which are likely runner ups. Based on an account by Conrad von Marburg who was in charge of purging Germany of heresy, Gregory IX sent a letter titled the Vox

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in Rama to the Rhineland city of Mainz to warn them about a cult Marburg had uncovered. The alleged practices of this group are spooky even today, and one can only imagine the terror inspired to people less able to dismiss it. The following rites of this [sect] are carried out: ‘‘When any novice is to be received among them and enters the sect of the damned for the first time, the shape of a certain frog [or toad] appears to him. Some kiss this creature on the hindquarters and some on the mouth, they receive the tongue and saliva of the beast inside their mouths.

Sometimes it appears unduly large and sometimes equivalent to a goose or a duck, and sometimes it even assumes the size of an oven. At length, when the novice has come forward, he is met by a man of wondrous pallor who has black eyes and is so emaciated and thin that since his flesh has been wasted, seems to remain only skin drawn over bone. The novice kisses him and feels cold, like ice, and after the kiss, the memory of the Christian faith totally disappears from his heart. Afterwards, they sit down to a meal and when they have arisen from it, the certain statue, which is usually in a set of this kind, a black cat descends backwards, with its tail erect. First, the novice, then the master, then each one of the order who are worthy and perfect, kiss the cat on its buttocks. Then each returns to his place and, speaking certain responses, they incline their heads toward to cat. "Forgive us!" says the master, and the one next to him repeats this, a third responding, "We know, master!" A fourth says "And we must obey.’’

This ‘Papal Bull’ (so-called because the Pope’s official letters were fixed with a wax bull seal) has been rumoured to cause a widespread cat genocide, with some theorists even claiming that this is the reason why Europe was hit so badly by the black death. Fortunately, this theory seems to have been mainly for the purpose of writing clickbait articles, as it makes little sense and is not supported by any historian I’ve seen. The Vox in Rama was not released or distributed to the public and did not come with any demands for cat oppression. However, the fact that this story was formed and deemed believable shows us how fully the spooky association of the cat had ingrained itself into society. Jews and witches – both groups suspected of devil worship - were rumoured to send cats on missions at night to do their bidding and even cast spells for them. A Scottish ailuromancy ritual known as taghairm involved burning a cat alive on a spit, provoking the devil to bargain with the human, granting special magical favours in return for an end to the cats suffering. It was also believed that Jews staged mock crucifixions using cats. Shockingly, the creepy thing about this to the medieval audience was not the torture of the animals at all – cat burning was relatively common in medieval France and Belgium as a spectator event – this was an anti-Christian version of something relatively normal, and thus creepy to this audience.

Although we can dredge up many horrible beliefs and practices about cats from this era, it might soothe your mind to reflect on how none of these ideas was universally held. This is a period in which very little of the population has a literary 'footprint' and so beliefs are approximated by historians from a relatively small array of sources. While it is easy to imagine everyone as a hive mind, as I mentioned earlier concerning the influence of the Church on belief, people did not really function in that way. There's no doubt that even in the Middle Ages there were many cat lovers in Europe. The cat population survived the period. If you still feel miffed about medieval moggies, check out the poem Pangur Bán. It is written by a Medieval Irish monk about his cat Pangur, who keeps him company while he works as a scholar. Very cosy.

Composed by, William Price, Undergraduate of History from the University of East Anglia

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Bllack Caats Reeborn

Black cats have long been associated with superstition and folklore having been linked to witchcraft, bad luck, and evil. Celtic and Japanese folklore looked on them with great suspicion and even now black cats are being snubbed when it comes to social media influencer's Instagram posts for looking bad in photographs. Black cats have had it rough. At worst maligned as evil outcasts and at best an unpopular subspecies. It is also the case that humans have not limited their hatred towards the despised in the animal kingdom but extended such suspicion to each other. In the modern-day, free expression and political discourse are seen as dangerous acts and those who dare hold a different view to the majority (or more worryingly a view held by the majority) are demonised, harassed and excommunicated from polite society. Those who hold such views are the new black cats of the political world but as with their feline counterpart there is really nothing to fear. In fact, this very demonisation and censorship of anyone who dissents has driven the rise in extremism on the fringes of politics (both left and right). The best way to prevent further radicalisation is to end this trend of fearful censorship. Not only is silencing someone with abhorrent views counterproductive in tackling whatever hatred or mistruth they have uttered but many extreme cases (that still ought to be covered by free speech) are used to justify the censorship of far less concerning individuals.

This demonisation of dissenters is not new and has been done throughout history. Whether it was Socrates forced to drink hemlock for criticising the state, Galileo executed for publishing material harmful to the Christian faith, the Nazi book burnings, cartoonists murdered for drawing Mohammed or even journalists locked up in Tehran, those with a feverous hatred for the new black cats of the political world should note the historical use of the very tactics they are deploying. Of course this isn’t exclusive to the right. Any left-wing person who dares to transgress from leftist orthodoxy is branded all manner of horrific things. I have several friends who are members of the Labour Party who have been labelled racists and xenophobes by their “comrades” for suggesting immigration be controlled or that a nation should even have borders at all. This forgets that over 70% of Brits want immigration controlled and that every country in the world does so. This is not some far right fringe view, it is a universally popular policy position to take. Even Germaine Greer one of the founders of modern-day feminism was ‘no platformed’ for voicing her opinions on the issue of transgenderism. Have the people demanding she be silenced not stopped to consider that the very same tactics and sentiments were deployed by those wishing to censor her feminist activism many years ago? Closer to home at Aberdeen University the titan socialist and anti-war activist George Galloway was assaulted. While the media reported the attack as the mere throwing of glitter (even the left on campus try to make assault friendly and welcoming) they ignored the fact that his pregnant wife had been shoved to the ground and the police refused to do anything. Even if you find these people’s views or even things they have said to be horrendous the defence of free speech requires a defence in all cases. To pick and choose who gets to speak on the grounds of truth or political correctness is to sacrifice the security of your own freedom.

Even more recently, Trump voters, many of whom are Latino and black, were labelled as deplorable and racist by Hillary Clinton in 2016 and similar accusations were levelled by Biden in 2020 resulting in huge backlash from swathes of hardworking decent people who dared to think their President wasn’t the devil incarnate. Ordinary Americans concerned with mass illegal immigration, attacks on free speech, increased lawlessness and the interests of other countries coming first should not be maligned in this way and their concerns should not simply be ignored by the ideologues of the left. The same has been done to Brexit voters, many of whom are equally concerned with immigration but also the undermining of Britain's economic potential, fishing waters and national sovereignty, have been branded at worst racist bigots or at best ‘gammons’. While some may not speak in erudite prose, they are citizens of this country and their lives, families and concerns are important. The reason the Brexit campaign was successful in the first place and the reason for labour's disastrous 2019 election performance is that the left no longer speaks for the working class, believing their concerns to be beneath them. 17.4 million brits voted for Brexit and 74 million Americans voted for Trump. To suggest that either is reflective of a sinister mainstream far-right element is ludicrous.

Organisations such as the Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC) in America are on the frontlines of this attack against people they dislike.

Conservative media personalities are labelled hate speakers, white supremacists and ‘Nazis’ (many such labelling resulting in lawsuits) and as a result mob harassment has put the security of their family and friends at risk. In the UK radio host Maajid Nawaz was a high-profile victim of SPLCs attack on ‘‘undesirables’’. Nawaz, an ex-Muslim extremist, regularly speaks out against religious fundamentalism and has worked tirelessly to fight radicalisation from within the Muslim community. Other commentators and media personalities in the US who have been smeared by the SPLC have reportedly had to discuss the response to possible kidnappings with the staff of their children's school, many face death threats on the daily and are in regular contact with law enforcement and the FBI when these threats become credible. While many of these firebrand commentators and raucous political associations can often be legitimately criticised for their tone of discourse they should not be maligned as the worst thing imaginable. It is lazy and dangerous. The argument follows that isolated and atomised cases of far-right terrorism along with fringe hate groups represent the right as a whole and it simply isn’t true.

While the media enjoys thrusting white supremacists and Nazis in our face, such ideologies are an increasingly small part of public discourse yet again these fringe elements are used to justify restrictions on free speech. The lack of supply in genuinely hateful people has resulted in cancel culture mobs targeting comedians telling offensive jokes, politicians concerned about immigration, or Muslims commenting on their own religion because there simply aren't enough real villains to go after. It was recently reported that the far right was on the rise in the northeast of Scotland.

This came as a shock yet having read the articles it was clear that the problem was relatively minor. The groups that the police were concerned about were not considered a threat and had an estimated membership of under 10 people. Furthermore the group is made up of the remnants of a previous group which suffered increasingly low memberships and police intervention. Even look at the BNP, one of Britain's most notable far right parties, was a laughing stock (most notably after Nick Griffin appeared on Question Time) and only managed to receive seats under the European Union’s parliamentary voting system at a time with catastrophically low voter turnout. Nigel Farage has even suggested that UKIP was able to provide a less extreme outlet for much of the political energy that had created the BNP and that his party’s success was the nail in the coffin. Even as UKIP jumped further to the right, The Brexit Party (more ‘big tent’ than right-wing), took most of UKIP’s voters with it. Such extreme politics simply isn’t popular in the UK. Even when more dangerous groups emerge that look to commit acts of violence or terrorism, not only is membership usually staggeringly low but the police and intelligence services are getting increasingly better at stopping said groups.

We cannot suggest these dangerous people do not exist or are not a threat but I do not accept that censorship is the solution, Instead, it is counterproductive and in many ways part of the problem. If someone has bad ideas the best way to address this is to engage in dialogue. If bad

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ideas are pushed underground they are free from scrutiny and opposition which is the perfect breeding ground for extremism. Debate, and the free market of ideas, are vital and to undermine it is to promote hate, not cancel it. In the age of the internet, where echo chambers are so easily formed, free speech is even more important. It is widely documented that those who join both far-right, far-left and religious extremist organisations are often isolated, vulnerable and disenfranchised. The best way to make someone feel disenfranchised is for them to be silenced and side-lined by the bulldozer of censorship. As difficult conversations are being stifled and the political establishment remains apathetic to the concerns of vast swathes of the population, these aforementioned extremist groups will become the only ones voicing these concerns. This drives people away from mainstream, civil and rational politics and into the realms of dangerous extremism.

This brings me to the breaching of the capitol building and the subsequent erosion of free speech. Firstly, the left should note their close association with political violence and their well-placed horror at the death and destruction beg the question where all this emotion was when people were killed in burning streets during the riots this summer? The fact that people cannot commit to a blanket condemnation of political violence is disturbing. Have the media or the left stopped to think that smears may simply intensify anger and division? Did Twitter or Facebook consider whether banning the leader of the free world in response during a time filled with paranoia, conspiracy theories and political division may simply add fuel to the fire? I guarantee there will be trouble on Inauguration Day (signalled in no part to already bolstered security around Washington, D.C.) and I guarantee it will be blamed solely on Trump. We must not allow big tech to censor without oversight or the Democrats who use divisive language, like sedition, to describe concerned citizens and politicians to wash their hands of any blame. Censorship has given credence to conspiracy theories and catapulted the levels of hysteria and anger into new heights. It also proves how foolish the big tech giants are. They really believe that simply purging Trump from the internet will silence his followers. They are in short playing with fire and trampling on free speech as they do so. As pointed out by Sanders-supporting model Emily Ratajkowski (don’t ask why I follow her on Twitter) this attack is likely to be used to usher in a new age of censorship that may target thinkers on the left as well as the right. Trumps ban from social media proves how far such companies are willing to go in terms of censorship (it won’t stop with the president). Indeed, a whistle-blower from Twitter secretly filmed CEO Jack Dorsey stating that these actions would go beyond Trump and that this was all “bigger than one account”. This is worrying because the definition of incitement used by twitter is radically different than that used by the supreme court and enshrined in the constitution.

Trump’s words/tweets could not be considered incitement to violence by any court and is legal under the first amendment yet twitter has decided to adopt its own definition of free speech (setting aside decades of authoritative supreme court rulings) and continues to claim it is not acting like a publisher. If you want to see how high the standard for incitement to violence is, refer to the landmark case of Brandenburg v. Ohio. This case referred to a KKK leader calling for the death of all African Americans, Jews and other minorities. This was held to be protected speech under the 1st amendment. This high standard which requires speech ‘‘directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action’’. Trump did not do this. He told supporters to ‘‘peacefully’’ march and cheer on Republican members of congress. He will not be prosecuted. Some do not point to his words at the rally but pin the blame on his legal challenges to the election. Such people should question whether a legal challenge can ever be legitimately brought again and what that premise means for democracy and election integrity.

While these are private companies, several commentators from across the political spectrum have argued that they are so vital to the functioning of democracy that they ought to be regulated as if they were public utilities. These companies are allowed to do as they have but the question of whether they should and how such censorship will be seen by the millions of already furious and desperate Americans. Why were major newspapers censored for reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal? Why was the same justification for the censorship not used when Trump’s tax returns were released under similar alleged circumstances? The approach should be consistent and censorship would be wrong in both circumstances.

Trump is banned while the Ayatollah of Iran is free to tweet to his heart’s content. Andrew Neil even pointed out that #AssasinateTrump along with tweets asking people to take out the President were allowed to remain on the site. There is a lack of consistency, transparency and most importantly accountability. These companies now have overwhelming control of public discourse and by extension democracy.

Big tech censorship became a huge point of contention for republicans during this election and have been a focal point of both legitimate anger and wild conspiracy theories during the legal challenges brought by trump’s legal team. Contrary to many in the media there was not ‘‘no evidence of voter fraud’’. Whether it was substantial enough to have any impact is questionable yet this illegal activity ought to be investigated to prevent future irregularities in other elections. Instead of allowing the constitution and legal system to handle Trump’s legal challenges, big tech decided to wade in and try and cover the whole thing up. To say this didn’t increase desperation, paranoia and anger is farcical. Not only has this censorship exacerbated the political tensions in America but it will not work and the genie will not be put back in the bottle. As this censorship increases we will see more and more people silenced because the people in charge now have tacit consent to implement their definitions of ‘hate’, ‘truth’ and ‘offence’ when regulating their platforms.

This is worrying as there appears to be a lowering of the bar for entry for being considered a ‘black cat’ for the purposes of censorship. Indeed groups like the SPLC along with high profile media outlets have a great deal of influence in creating the dominant narrative used to destroy political ‘black cats’ (many of whom do not deserve the labels attributed to them). Now, the increasingly censorious nature of big tech spawns increasingly dangerous precedents that will essentially kill off free speech for everyone else on platforms now integral to the functioning of democracy, political debate and the dissemination of information. This censorship will result in the intensifying of political division as echo chambers are reinforced while anger and distrust are cultivated. If we want to tackle hatred an extremism in whatever form it arises then we should take advantage of free speech and open dialogue to educate, correct and debate rather than simply brushing the problem under the rug. While it may be an uncomfortable prospect to allow certain political ‘black cats’ to enjoy their right to free speech it may be you who becomes tomorrow’s ‘black cat’, and you will desperately wish (like many who have) you hadn’t cheered on the suppression you will inevitably face.

Composed by, Oliver James Pike, Undergraduate of Law at the University of Aberdeen

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Toowering Maalevolence On November 5th, 2018 a conspiracy health blog reported a story of a mysterious mass mortality event of starlings in the Huijgenspark of the Hague. The birds had begun to drop dead by the hundreds and according to this report, it was in connection to the expansion of the 5G network around the city. As you might expect, the story was shown to be mostly untrue. At the time there were no tests of the new towers going on close to the park. A test had taken place earlier that year in the Hague, although it was not immediately followed by any similar incidents. The event itself did happen throughout the fall of 2018 and up towards 337 starlings were found dead around the park. The cause is yet to be determined.

However, mass die-offs are, unfortunately, not that uncommon. The causes remain largely unknown, but poisoning is perhaps the most likely answer to these strange events. Although it is highly unlikely that 5G is the perpetrator, this story managed to awaken an unease in a lot of people.

Animals dying in mass without any apparent reason certainly evokes some form of apocalyptic feeling, especially when the animals in question fall out of the sky. And after all, a starling is not much larger than an average household cat. This, if something, should be a reason for concern for all of us!

The most obvious proof of the falsity of this story is of course that both us and our cats are alive and seemingly not under the influence of dangerous amounts of electromagnetic radiation at this moment. In 2018, 5G was still in a largely experimental stage. Two years later, a mast is seen on almost every block in my city. This has, so far, not led to any mass mortality events that are worth reporting about. However, the defining event of the first half of 2020 was something eerily similar. The advent of the virus rekindled the online debate about the safety of 5G. The apocalypse was now well on its way it seemed, it had started with the birds and now it came for humans. To some people, there was a clear common denominator and stories began to spread of rising numbers of COVID-19 cases which coincided with the building of 5G towers. This culminated in 77 cases of arson throughout the UK. Perhaps the fear these people feel towards 5G is unfounded. Even if they were to be right, the burning of cell phone towers is a terrible method for convincing people. But perhaps there is also a possibility of something deeper in their message, a rejection of modernity. Is there perhaps a case against these towers that we have not yet considered?

It is certainly a hard case to advocate for. Especially considering the innumerable miracles of medicine and technology that science has provided us with. Because of them, we now live longer and more comfortably than ever before. Food and work are for the most part abundant. Diseases that were considered a death sentence have become mere annoyances. We have access to an information-entertainment network that spans the whole world and includes all the information that has ever been gathered by humanity, and we carry it in our back pockets. And yet, there seems to be something missing. Some vital aspect that seems to stop us from feeling completely fulfilled. Those familiar with Mazlow's hierarchy of needs might recognise this as an age in which the first three steps are guaranteed to those who live in the West. Our physiological needs as well as our need for security and belongingness is for the most part satisfied. However, we now lack a clear path towards self-actualization. While a farmer in the 1800s might have found himself actualized through his work. By providing a home and a shelter for his family and simultaneously acting according to the will of his God, he could sense the importance of his existence. This has been taken away from us in modern society. It has been decided upon that God is dead and that we are completely free to make our own decisions. It is a form of spiritual or cultural malaise that seems to permeate all of Western society. A lack of purpose that has led many into severe mental illness or addiction.

Here we see how technology, despite its many wonders can also lead to our detriment. The ease at which entertainment or pornographic material can be acquired on the Internet has prompted large amounts of young men to spend hours behind the screen. A whole generation has become docile, harmless and vain. Their bodies flabby and weak, their minds dull and machinist. The loss of purpose has led to a constant chase after dopamine which ultimately achieves nothing. The time spent on social media and in video games is stolen away from that which could have been much more productive. It has led to a hugely inflated porn industry, whose true victims we begin to see now, not only in those who use it but also those who work in it. Furthermore, it has led to the increased monopolization and censorship of social media by large companies such as Facebook and Google. Despite the many issues, it is not a problem that is often discussed and in many cases, the resistance is often only a sham. In a way, all of us are addicted. The phone is probably the last thing you see before you go to bed and the first thing you see when you wake up. It is always there and most of us don't even want to leave this place. Those addicted to electronic entertainment are both literally and symbolically slaves to this machine.

It is also true that this nexus of entertainment and information contains almost all of the human knowledge and is, therefore, one of the most valuable things we have at this time. I see a few problems with this. First of all, the Internet seems to contain at least an equal amount of misinformation. It can be hard to tell the truth from fantasy, which is what leads to stories of birds getting killed by 5G towers. Online media also tends to be heavily biased and mostly stick to the truth only if it benefits their ideology. When these companies have so much power that they become considered some form of arbiter of truth, it begins to be hard to distinguish fantasy from reality. The second problem is that the amazing abilities of the Internet have made us, in large part, fully dependent on it. Much like all forms of technology, it is at first only a convenience. Much like electricity at first, was reserved only for certain people who could afford it. A sideshow attraction and an oddity, it quickly became so important to humans that we cannot even picture modern civilization without it. In this case, the Internet began as a place to store and share information with others, sometimes with people on the other side of the world. However, could you today imagine a scenario in which the Internet disappears for one day? Could you imagine the number of deaths?

Although 5G promises increased bandwidth, lower latencies and higher capacity, it might not be what humans need right now. Maybe we do not need to be able to download an episode of a Netflix series faster. Maybe we do not need to play our video games better or communicate over social

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media more. Maybe we should try to become less and not more dependent on the Internet. Maybe humans need to go out and commune with nature. Maybe we need to see each other's actual faces. We were doing completely fine with 4G and so why would we need to be even faster? This is the semi-Faustical evil circle that technology presents us with. It creates solutions which then lead to more problems, going back would require you to lose the comfort that you just gained, so instead you create new technology to alleviate the new problem. This will eventually lead to new problems which will require even newer solutions. Are you feeling depressed because you lack a sense of purpose and therefore spend all your time online instead of going outside? Consume this product that gives you dopamine by awakening a sense of nostalgia. If that doesn't work you can always take this pill which forces you to feel good.

The answer to our problems lies somewhere else than the 'forward' of technological progress. It lies in a rediscovery of our purpose as individuals and society. Are we truly here only to hedonistically chase after pleasant sensations? Surely, other things must matter more to us. I do not wish to fully discredit technology, as I wrote earlier it has greatly contributed to human life. It is not the technology itself that is evil. It is us. We need to learn to master ourselves, how to live according to truth and how to be good before we continue making technological progress.

Until this is done, the evil circle of technology will continue to exist. If we cannot do this, then our hearts will remain empty holes, waiting to be filled with chemicals. Our relationship with the technology we create and how we use it will remain irresponsible and we will be true slaves to it.

This is the best argument I could muster for this side. Of course, it runs the risk of getting lumped together with those from the anti-5G community, thus becoming the subject of ridicule. It is not based on empirically verifiable evidence or statistics. All such numbers will point towards the undeniable usefulness of technology in battling the many ills of the human condition. What I have provided are observations which I gladly challenge you to disprove. There is also no clear path to follow on how we ought to make this change within ourselves. It might even be too late and we will now be forced to watch as this evil circle plays itself out. However, if we do decide to go back. Then the best way to do so is not to just get rid of all technology. It begins with getting rid of the pointless gadgets that don't contribute anything at all. It also requires us to cut down on our comforts and start controlling our passions. A break from all dopamine boosters, whether they be pornography or video games could be useful. If you have not done so yet, I highly suggest trying dopamine fasting. For one day you do not look at any kind of screen. No social media or reading on the Internet. For a genuine dopamine fasting experience, refrain from reading books or working out as well. Just sit in your room and write! What we ought NOT to do is to burn down towers. It is pointless as they will get rebuilt within days or weeks and will often only cause people to have disdain for the movement. Instead, we should encourage a healthier lifestyle and that we legally and safely dismantle them.

Composed by, Luke Litvinov, Undergraduate of Philosophy at West Virginia University

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A Caat’s Drream The average feline sleeps up to 15 hours per day, with some cats even sleeping up to 20 hours in a 24-hour period. Cats are one of the sleepiest animals and prefer having short and long naps throughout the day instead of having one long sleep at night like humans. Domesticated cats sleep much more than wild cats as wild cats see sleep as more of a luxury and kittens need even more sleep than middle-aged cats as they are putting all their energy into growing. The only animals that get more slumber than cats are possums and bats, therefore many have wondered whether cats dream or not as their sleep takes up the majority of their life. Do they dream? If so, what do they dream about?

Research has confirmed that cats' brains are very active during their sleep and have similar sleep stages as humans, therefore they do in fact dream, and the twitching that they do whilst sleeping is a sign of our kitties having an energetic dream. Like us, cat’s brains process the information and experiences that have occurred during that day, meaning that they probably have a very similar style of dreams as us. As they curl up anywhere and everywhere during the day, they take in what has happened to them and around them during the day and with that information, they create a dream world just like people do.

To understand what our friendly felines are dreaming about, it’s important to look at the science behind their sleep. Although they tend to sleep their life away, cats sleeping stages are identical to humans and so scientists have managed to do a lot of research on their sleep, and therefore their dreaming habits. Cats usually fall asleep pretty quickly into a non-rapid eye movement (NREM) stage like us where they don’t experience much activity or dreaming at the beginning. As they get into a deeper sleep, they progress to the rapid eye movement (REM) stage. This is where the most vivid and active dreams take place in not only cats but humans too.

Another thing that we share in common with them is the twitching movement that we sometimes do during sleep. If you look closely whilst your cat is snoozing, you will see their paws kicking out, nose scrunching and the ears twitching which means that they are deep in their REM sleep stage and are having a very vivid dream. Cats have much shorter periods of REM sleep at roughly 6 minutes per snooze, whilst us humans have around 90-120 minutes of it. Evidently, they have much shorter dreams than us but their neurons are still firing and so their brain manages to construct a storyline even in this short period of time.

Unfortunately, we cannot sit down with our cats and ask them what they dream about, but we can make educated guesses based on the knowledge that we do have on cats sleeping habits. Anything our cats do throughout the day, whether it’s chasing a mouse, playing with toys, eating far too much food, is being processed whilst they sleep and re-lived in their dreams. Like humans, felines will dream about what they know along with the random details in our dreams that never really make sense. Therefore, they are most likely a mix of realistic experiences for them like playing, eating and going on adventures with silly and illogical images thrown in.

If you look closely whilst your beloved cat is sleeping, you can spot the signs of what stage of sleep they are in and therefore identify whether they are dreaming or not. For younger cats and kittens, during their REM sleep stage where their dreams occur, they will be twitching their eyes and muscles to match their movements in their dream. But as cats grow older, the sudden twitches and movements during their sleep decrease and most of their dreaming takes place when they are fully relaxed in a deep sleep and therefore not moving much at all.

Our cats never fail to surprise us, and when it comes to sleeping, some kitties go the further step, literally, and can actually sleepwalk. This sleep disorder is usually only in cats with brain damage. In a study done by Professor Michel Jouvet from Claude-Bernard University in France, he examined sleepwalking cats and found that some would crouch low as if they were hunting a mouse whilst others would hunt for food or play with make-believe toys. However, as interesting as this sounds, if your feline has ever shown signs of sleepwalking, it’s best to notify and take them to your vet as it is a serious sign of brain damage.

A final fact I’ll leave you with is one of the nicest and most wholesome things about cats. Staying on the topic of their sleeping behaviour, most cats will actually try to adjust their sleeping patterns to match their owners in an attempt to play and spend as much time as possible with you whilst you’re awake and also cuddle up next to you whilst you sleep. This adorable behaviour shows just how pure and lovely felines are, and anyone who says differently just misunderstands them.

Composed by, Kendra Clark, Undergraduate of English Literature at the University of Aberdeen

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Ouut Inn Thhe Coold There are many videos on the internet about cats and kittens that were abandoned or badly treated and found by a good soul who helps them overcome their difficulties and find happily ever after. Most people love those warm-hearted stories that make you believe that there is good in this world. There is a belief in our society than anyone can rise above their initial situation, that nothing condition you to living a certain way of life.

The public has a natural empathy towards stories with hardships and a happy ending. It is the typical narrative scheme followed in stories. The protagonist is living their lives, they encounter difficulties that are developed along the story-line until they are resolved and the character knows a well-deserved happy ending. This idea is present in popular culture and within every product coming from the United States that we consume like cinema, shows and literature.

It has its basis in the myth of the self-made man, the idea that the key for an individual’s success lays within the individual itself and is not influenced by outside conditions like education or social status and rise above it, against all odds, climbing the social ladder. This term coined by Henry Clay in 1832 to talk about Benjamin Franklin’s upbringing from a son of a candle maker to being one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Then, developed by Frederick Douglass, a social reformer, abolitionist, orator and writer who escaped slavery, the term “self-made man” became an archetype and cultural ideal in the United States. This is when being the outcast, the outsider has been romanticized. Being disowned by society is represented as an initial situation that is irrevocably going to evolve and change into something better that is the character’s goal, inspiration.

Terry Eagleton, in The Guardian, talks about the outsider literature as a phenomenon appearing in the English literature during the 19th century.

There is an apparent taste for marginality with writers from the lower-middle class like George Eliot, Dickens, and the Bronte sisters and, from the poorer side of the gentry, Jane Austen. They are considered as marginalised but Terry Eagleton argues that they are more “betweeners”, they live in between worlds: upper class and underdog, urban and rural, province and metropolis, so that they can reach a wider range of experiences that will be brought together in a single plot. Terry Eagleton states that “modernists were nomadic, in-between, adrift between cultures” and that “they handled English with the exquisite, innovative self-consciousness of the outsider”. He gives an interpretation about the importance of the outsider: “Literary theory was soon to catch up with literary practice. Literature isn't usually written by vagrants, but there is something vagrant about the very idea of it. It is language which is not quite at home, out on a spree, portable from place to place, open to a clash of interpretations.

Ambiguity, the very stuff of literary language, is meaning which is wandering, transitional, in-between.”

The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald (1925) would be the perfect example. Gatsby is originally a poor man that keeps evolving to have the status permitting him to be with Daisy, the woman he loves. By wining money through some illegal business, Gatsby grows economically permitting him to climb the social ladder, this makes it possible for him to be with Daisy, although it is not enough for her, she prefers kipping with the appearances of a perfect marriage instead of being with the man she loves. Even if Gatsby grew by himself despite the circumstances to attain his goal, it is too late for him to have his fairy tale happy ending. This love for the outcast is also highlighted through the character of Nick Carraway who does not belong in Gatsby’s world but gets a glimpse into it through a peculiar friendship. He is the outsider who gets an Intel and his an objective observer of what happens.

This type of character is visible in a lot of different genres. In shows like Gossip Girl (2007), Dan Humphrey keeps being referred to as the ultimate outsider but is one of the main characters of the show. He is again the character that observes everything that happens. Along the way, as a writer, like Nick Carraway, he uses what he sees to nourish his stories about the Upper East Side, a world he doesn’t belong in but wants to. At the end of the show, the viewer learns that Dan Humphrey was Gossip Girl all along and that in a way despite degrading him and refusing to consider him a part of their world, he had a central role.

We could argue that Dan Humphrey and Nick Carraway, following the idea of Terry Eagleton, are actually “betweeners", more than actually marginalised. Dan Humphrey is still a New-Yorker living in Brooklyn in a huge loft which is still an expensive lifestyle to live in the Big Apple, he is in a private school and his the son of an ex-rock star who owns an art gallery. He might not be up to the standards of Serena Van Der Woodsen and Blair Waldorf but he cannot be fully considered as marginalised. It is a similar thing with Nick Carraway: his family owns a hardware business.

He is Daisy’s cousin who is originally from a wealthy family, which could make us think that Nick Carraway is not economically challenged. The reader also knows that he went to Yale University which underlines the fact that he is not fully an outsider.

The myth of the self-made man is recurring, people like it so much because it is a message of hope, that anything is possible if you put your mind to it. Disney is a fervent advocate of this. In cartoons like Rapunzel, Mulan and the Princess and the Frog, the story starts with three female characters who do not have good life conditions whether it is being locked in a tower, being a shame to their families or being poor and victim of racism. In the end, the characters rose from their circumstances and become princesses.

To some extent, this myth is also present in Harry Potter, even if he had a certain reputation in the world of wizards, he came from an abusive background to being a saviour and a hero.

The role of the outcast, that still is in a way an outcast but becomes the main character is more and more used as a slight modification of the myth, you do not have to change inherently who you are to be successful. This is visible with the Outsiders' comics which are about a team of superheroes that do not fit the norms of mainstream superheroes but still save the world.

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Stories of rags to riches are highly popular but has been criticized by the intellectual and cultural history of the United States as something that was never accurate, just a myth, developed by the government as a sort of propaganda to idealize the United States as a better land, the land of the free where everything is possible for anyone. This criticism is visible in the Great Gatsby that serves as a cautionary tale regarding the myth of the self-made man and the American Dream. Fitzgerald highlights, in rather a pessimistic way that poor people will always live at the mercy of those who were luckier than them, the riches: “an unhappy fate is inevitable for the poor and striving individual, and the rich are allowed to continue without penalty their careless treatment of others’ lives”. Never the less, the American Dream, true or not, being able to be self-made, rise from poverty has been nourishing cinema and literature and influencing writers to describe people from all walks of lives, showing them in different conditions and experiences, making them evolve or not.

This idea of self-made man, the American Dream and the Pursuit of Happiness is problematic in America. With the industrial boom experienced in the 19th century, a higher social class and status was established in society. With the Beautiful and Damned, Fitzgerald exposes the society of his time as a hedonistic and materialistic society. With the character of Anthony, the reader can see that the outcast overcoming adversities is just an ideal established but that in everyday life it is the powerfully established that rule. Anthony is expecting greatness for his life and thinks it is his right, but he is unwilling to work for it. The character uses his lineage and inheritance for his quest of pleasure without pursuing his literary goals.

Moreover, this ideal is so deep rooted in American society that it is a part of the Declaration of Independence: “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creators with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”. America is based on myths that fuels the idea that it is a welcoming land for all people, where they have equal opportunities to achieve greatness. This is highly problematic because these idealistic ideas based on a sort of abstract philosophy does not translate into people’s lives. When put into context, this ideals are excluding a big part of American society such as Native Americans, African American and women. This forgetting of such a big part of the American population is visible in the literature of the time. There is a real effort of cultural erasure and denial of African and Native American.

This proves that not everyone can “make it” in America, you can go from rags to riches as long as you are a white male with a good head start.

Composed by, Cécile Fardoux, Undergraduate of English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Aberdeen

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Ottherworldly Frriends Ask any gamer about memorable animals in video games and you will likely be met with a list so long that it transcends space and time. Fabled animal friends include horses such as Epona and Roach, Link and Geralt of Rivia’s trusty steeds of The Legend of Zelda and The Witcher fame respectively. Of course, the popularity of these ponies likely pales in comparison to that of certain canine companions, such as the much loved Dogmeat of the Fallout series and German shepherd Riley in Call of Duty: Ghosts. Even some birds have a fan following, such as a vault hunter Mordecai’s avian ally Bloodwing from Borderlands and Archimedes the dove belonging to the Medic of Team Fortress 2. However, there is one animal noticeably absent from the spotlight.

Despite their real-life popularity cats have quietly been slinking around in the shadows of games, usually utilised as additional scenery in towns and cities. However, there are some instances where cats have been minor characters, such as Alvina, the huge talking (and surprisingly quite friendly) cat from Dark Souls and perhaps the more memorable Mike Tyson-esque iteration of Tiny the Tiger from the Crash Bandicoot spinoff game Crash of the Titans. Cats as main characters are currently few and far between and are generally more on the anthropomorphic side.

Those who are lucky enough to have had a Sega Genesis may remember the 1993 game Bubsy in: Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind in which the titular feline must regain his record-breaking wool ball collection which has been stolen by aliens. The bobcat’s adventures continued in a further two games, released in 1994 and 1996 before his 21-year hiatus. 2017 saw Bubsy return to our consoles in Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back, revisiting the alien plot from the first game. Unfortunately, in this iteration, Bubsy suffered a similar fate to other rebooted series’ such as Duke Nukem, receiving poor ratings from critics and players alike. Accolade, the creators of Bubsy, were undeterred, releasing the latest installation Bubsy: Paws on Fire in 2019 to a better reception, suggesting there is life in the old (bob)cat yet.

Although Bubsy is perhaps one of the most well-known feline playable characters, he was not the first. The early 1980s saw the release of not one but two different games called Alley Cat, one for the Commodore 64 and the other for Atari, featuring cats named Thomas in the former, and Freddy in the latter. Interestingly, although they are different games, they both have a similar main objective: each cat must reach his love. Thomas must dodge and jump over obstacles while running along wall tops. Freddy takes it one step further, entering people’s houses and completing tasks such as eating fish or catching mice all while avoiding various objects, dogs and unfriendly cats.

Freddy, Thomas, and Bubsy belong to a rather exclusive club of playable cat characters, joined in 2002 by a futuristic time traveller Blinx in a release for the original Xbox called Blinx: The Time Sweeper. Blinx’s anthropomorphic and child-friendly design made him a prime candidate for becoming the mascot of Xbox, but unfortunately, the game did not rise to expectations and the sequel Blinx 2: Masters of Time and Space did little to help poor Blinx. Subsequently, the main character of the Halo series, Master Chief became widely considered as Xbox’s mascot, and Blinx has faded into obscurity, with no new instalments to the series since 2004.

Although there has been a noticeable drought of fully playable main cat characters in games this has been somewhat mitigated by some games having controllable or interactable cat characters. World of Warcraft, arguably the most popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game has always contained collectable kitties which follow the player and a variety of cat mounts to ride and fly on. This was hugely developed in the 2012 Mists of Pandaria expansion with the inclusion of the battle pet system, in which the collectable pets were able to be levelled and used in mini-battles in a rock-paper-scissors fashion. Further expansions saw more and more pets added to the game. The fuzzy followers have proven so popular that there is an achievement to be gained when the player has obtained twenty different cats. Even better, the achievement grants the ‘Crazy Cat Lady/Man’ title to your character. There is, as of writing, sadly no such title available for collecting cat mounts yet.

There seems to a trend of games with interactable cats where main characters are unscrupulous or violent producing the rather interesting juxtaposition of hardened criminals and murderers showing their soft side. Cats can be praised or scolded in Rockstar’s cowboy classic Red Dead Redemption 2 but the player being unable to pet the cats led to an outcry from fans and many online petitions. However, in the Assassin’s Creed series, cats have been pettable in many titles. Cats have an important role in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, set in Ancient Egypt. Main character Bayek is often popular with the cats and is able to make a fuss of them, but he cannot pet dogs. This is unsurprising considering cats were sacred to the Ancient Egyptians. Additionally, if the player accidentally (or deliberately if you are a monster) kills cats, the third ‘strike’ will result in Bayek becoming ‘desynchronised’ and the player having to start from the last save.

Taking cat petting simulations to a new degree is Yakuza 6: The Song of Life where hardened gangster Kazuma Kiryu has to help set up a cat café by befriending 19 stray cats, each with their own favourite foods. First, Kiryu has to locate the cats, which can be a difficult feat as sometimes they are nowhere to be found – art imitates life indeed – and then he needs to feed them enough of the food they like to fill their friendship meter. One could argue that this is also peak realism. Once the cats have been befriended, they will reside at the cat café and Kiryu can go and visit them, giving them fuss when they decide he is worthy of attention.

Anybody that had a DS will likely remember the Nintendogs games, where originally only a variety of (admittedly very cute) interactable pups were available. The release of the 3DS and subsequent Nintendogs + Cats game also featured three different breeds of adorable kittens, which could be fed, watered, played with and even bathed just like the dogs. In a similar vein, the PC series of Petz games featured a whole host of cat and dog breeds which were fully interactable, with lots of fun minigames. Even though Petz 5, the most recent addition to the series was released 18 years ago, there is still a bustling community for the games today, with many people customising the in-game breeds to resemble more realistic members of the cat (and dog) world and participating with them in various online shows and activities. The adulation of pet simulations is also prevalent in The Sims franchise, each mainline iteration has its own pet expansion with highly customisable cats and dogs to recreate your reallife furry friend perfectly.

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Square Enix’s 1997 spectacular Final Fantasy VII saw the franchise’s first - and thus far only - quadrupedal party member, a young but intelligent animal of a lion-esque species called Nanaki (players will know him better by his experimental name Red XIII). Although whether he is feline or canine is hotly debated amongst fans, his leonine appearance would suggest the former. Debate aside, he is a formidable part of the team, being adept in both physical and magical attacks. As such, long-time fans of the game were disappointed due to his inclusion but lack of playability in Final Fantasy 7: Remake, released earlier this year, though the developers have explained it is because he joins the party so late in the game.

However, if you, like me, are a Red XIII fan, do not despair. Some tech-savvy fans have been able to alter the game to make him playable for the short time he joins main character Cloud and the gang. Furthermore, the next instalment will likely see the much-loved four-legged friend as a playable companion.

The cat-dog debate is also present in other games. Generation two of the Pokémon games (Pokémon Gold, Silver and later Crystal) saw the release of 100 new monsters to catch, including legendary beasts Suicune, Entei and Raikou, complete with a tragic backstory. The three initially perished when they were caught in a fire in their home, Brass Tower (later Burned Tower), before being resurrected by the legendary fire bird, Ho-oh. Each represents what happened to the tower, Raikou for the lightning that caused the fire, Entei for the fire which engulfed the tower and Suicune for the rain that quelled the flame. Although colloquially known as the ‘legendary dogs’, many fans have argued that they are more cat-like. Whilst Suicune and Entei could perhaps be considered more dog-like, the jury is truly out on Raikou, which has seemingly taken design inspiration from the tiger. If you are a Pokémon fan you will, of course, recognise there are a number of the (now nearly a whopping 900) creatures that are heavily inspired by cats.

Those only slightly familiar with the series will likely have heard of Meowth, a pokémon resembling the lucky Chinese cats which feature heavily in the anime series as the nefarious Team Rocket's accomplice, with the unique ability to properly communicate with the human characters. In the games, Meowth has also received special treatment and is thus far the only pokémon to have received different catchable forms in three separate regions, each with their own unique morphology. In the latest games, it also received a special 'gigantamax’ form, causing bemusement in fans due to its similar appearance to the ‘longcat’ memes. Other cat-like Pokémon have also transcended into household names. Although Incineroar, a humanoid feline wrestler pokémon was initially met with controversy in the fanbase, its role in both the anime and feature-length film I Choose You, as well as its inclusion in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, helped to cement its popularity.

Speaking of popularity, the latest Animal Crossing game, Animal Crossing: New Horizons caused quite a stir with the inclusion of new cat villager Raymond. Although a number of cat villagers already existed, with many such as Bob, Lolly and Ankha already being popular with the fanbase, Raymond firmly cemented himself as the number one most sought after villager. This is largely to do with his unique heterochromatic business-cat design. Since he is brand new to the series, it is currently difficult for players to get their paws on him. All villagers up until now have devices called ‘Amiibo cards’ which allow players to scan their favourite villagers and put them into their games. The lack of these for new villagers such as Raymond coupled with his popularity has meant that people have sometimes paid extortionate amounts of both in-game and real-life currency just to have him on their islands, which many fans have criticised as being against the spirit of the game and giving the community a bad reputation.

Animal Crossing is just one example of how cats are stalking into the limelight of video games. In the Monster Hunter series, the felynes are small bipedal cats which are usually docile. In 2018’s Nintendo Switch title Monster Hunter: World, the player is accompanied by a felyne called a palico which will aid them in battle. Although the player may only have one palico, they are highly customisable when initially obtained. This coupled with their adorable looks made them extremely popular companions.

However, the apex of cats in video games is seemingly about to be reached with the release of the Playstation 5.

Alongside Sony’s official announcement for its newest console, the trailer for a game called Stray was also shown, featuring a nonanthropomorphic cat as its hero for the first time since Thomas and Freddy almost 40 years ago. Although not many details were given away, the cat is shown wandering around a futuristic Hong Kong. The idea itself is not entirely novel, as there is a similar game called Peace Island currently in development, in which the player sees the world through the eyes of nine cats. However, Stray has been in development for quite some time and is set to come to Playstation 5 next year. As such, it will likely pip Peace Island to the post for full release. For cat lovers which worry about the price the PS5 might be sold at, never fear, Stray is coming to Playstation 4 as well.

The history of cats in gaming is long, and the aforementioned felines both major and minor are not an exhaustive list, there are many more catrelated characters and quests ready to be discovered. Whilst not as conspicuous as dogs and horses, with games like Stray being developed and the continued popularity of cat companions, their future in gaming is bright-eyed and bushy tailed.

Composed by, Thea Mainprize, Undergraduate of Zoology at the University of Aberdeen

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Feline Bestiary

This page aims to be a collection of portraits documenting all the cats that can be seen across the city of Aberdeen.

The Feline Bestiary of Aberdeen is furnished with photographs submitted by the general public.

Those behind this Winter 2021 issue of the Journal of Matters Relating to Felines: President: Editor: Writers: Logo Design:

Maurice Alexander Cécile Fardoux Kendra Clark, Peri Dalkic, Luke Litvinov, Thea Mainprize, Oliver James Pike, Tomás Pizarro-Escuti, William Price Sonia Garyayev

Email: Instagram: Facebook: Twitter:

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journalofmattersrelatingtofelines@outlook.com @journalofmatters Journal of Matters Relating to Felines @journalofmatter