The encounter with his cat in his shower when she saw him naked, is a key moment in the French philosopher, Jacques Derrida’s exposition of The Animal That Therefore I Am. In this text Derrida explores the boundary between human and ‘animal’. Inexplicably he felt uncomfortable and ashamed before the cat’s inscrutable gaze. Derrida realised, ‘The animal looks at us, and we are naked before it. I am the animal that my cat sees’ (Derrida 2008:118). He admitted to the possibility that the animal thinks, and to experience an animal looking back at us challenges the confidence of our own gaze — we lose our unquestioned privilege in the universe. The startling effect of the cat’s gaze on Derrida was due to it occurring within a milieu where the scientific or philosophical eye never expected the animal being observed or interpreted to examine the examiner.
But, philosophical machinations aside, cats are playful creatures as every cat lover knows. It is this aspect that I tried to capture in this coterie of cats scampering through the grounds of the delicatessen at Tokara. The cats are cloned from prototypes made in three different materials: cardboard, steel wool and clay. They were submitted to their bronze forms and variously patinated. The playfulness is not dependent on logos, or a symbolic language but a recognition of emotion in the other. At this point both the observed and the observer are responding beyond the reach of words.
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