Karen Piddington: 2015

Hélène Cixous (French feminist & philosopher).

Writes about a dead bird trapped in a wooden lattice inside a woman’s house. She and her cat are outside. She wears rubber gloves and carries a stick to poke the wedged bird. The wild thing is in the domestic space – the space of the woman and her cat. The cat has certain freedoms in the space of the house. It pulls the bird free and sets it down on the carpet inside. The action is indulged as part of the woman’s recognition of the cat’s otherness. The bird cannot be removed until the cat’s inspection of the lifeless body is complete. “I don’t dare go ahead of the cat, for I recognise the rights animals have among themselves”. The animality of pets remains unknowable. When the bird turns out to be alive and flies off, the woman finds in her sympathy for the cat the means of taking on its fearlessness. If only the bird would come back, “I too would play with its lukewarm body, I’d give it sharp little blows with my paw and I’d slit its throat cheerfully.”