Neobiotopathy
Having read the story of Caramel, an eight-year-old male cat living in an undisclosed location in France, diagnosed by his veterinary psychiatrist, Claude Béata, as suffering from neobiotopathy, that is, ‘suffering connected to newness in a cat’s environment’, I felt sympathy for the poor beast, of course. At the same time, knowing a thing or two about cats (though never having trained as a feline counsellor), I imagined Caramel miaowing disdainfully at his hebdomadosyllabic diagnosis. Fond as I am of animals, I wonder: is it not a commentary on the woeful failures of our attempt to enable peaceful, flourishing human coexistence that we are now drawn to pontificate instead on ‘the larger questions of multispecies society’? And is it not, in fact, an injustice to dogs and cats to imagine them as being like us, enclosing their mysterious perceptions into our pretentious nomenclatures?
