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Who's that cat?
So, who is this mysterious cat, and why do I use this photo for most of my social media profile pictures? The image in question is one of an orange, long-haired cat on a vivid blue background. The cat is seated upright on the floor, which has the same blue material as the background. Some creases and folds in the fabric break the illusion of the cat sitting in a void, and clearly mark the space as that of a photo booth or studio. The photo, when I found it, was posted as an example of the "American Curl" breed of domestic cat on the American Cat Fancier's website. It's not live anymore but is archived on the Wayback Machine. The cat is pictured at a three quarters angle, facing to the viewer's right, and staring up, out of frame, in that direction. The cat does indeed show the characteristic "curl" of the ears, which gives the breed its name. The ears curl backwards towards the back of the head, and from the front, gives the impression that the cat has rounded, rather than pointed ears. At its earliest appearance on the Wayback Machine, in 2008, we learn the following information about the cat pictured:
GC PHANTASIA DAKOTACURL - LH
Cameo Tabby male
B:O: Mary P. Hare
The "GC" stands for Grand Champion, and indicates that he's not only won championships, but enough so to be a grand champion, which is like a higher tier of cat award, as I understand it. Then, as pedigree cats are named with their last name first, and the "hereditary" name refers to the cattery where the cat was born. So, Phantasia here is the surname, and is a cattery in West Virginia, owned and operated by this cat's Breeder/Owner, Mary P. Hare. Mary still seems to be doing her cat thing down there in the WV hollers, as the current cat pictured for the American Curl breed on the ACFA's website is also hers. So that means that Dakotacurl is the cat's formal given name, for show and paperwork purposes. It's likely that he was called by a nickname (a pet name, as it were), possibly Dakota. "LH Cameo Tabby male" refers to his Long Hair, and coloring-- Cameo tabby is a lighter orange with less defined stripes-- and male is his sex. In any case, as is eventual in every case, GC Phantasia Dakotacurl is likely long dead.
He lives on, however! A quick image search shows that versions of the image are saved in some Pinterest boards, and occasionally pop up in junk SEO articles about cat breeds. On top of that, clearly, his legacy is important to me, if only because we have been travelling together on the internet for so long.
So how did we meet? In the seminal, formative, deeply influential webcomic, Achewood, one of the two main characters, Ray Smuckles, is an American Curl cat, and is drawn as having the rounded ears associated with the breed. At a certain point in the comic's continuity, Ray's history as a show cat is revealed, and the shape of his ears is revealed to be an intentional reference to his breed, rather than simply an eccentricity of the artist's style. I started reading Achewood in 2004, and followed its updates as they happened until the eventual hiatus and slow death of the strip in the mid-2010s {Note that it is back in Patreon form}
So, what happened is that I wanted to know what this cat breed looked like in real life, rather than as black and white comic line drawings, and so I went to the internet for answers. And I found Phantasia Dakotacurl. There is something about this image which I love so much, which speaks to me so deeply. For one, the colors-- mmm so good, so rich and saturated, the orange and the blue, love it. He's framed beautifully in the shot, and it's a square image, making in perfect for profile pics. Additionally, there's just something so charming about his vacant stare, the dramatic swoop of his big fluffo tail. It’s giving big himbo vibes, and I am here for it. Have been here for it. So, as soon as I found this picture, I saved it to my Pictures folder, and have been toting it around ever since. I think it was my first Twitter profile pic back in 2007 and was my Tumblr avatar for almost the entire time I was there. Additionally, I made a zine for a coworker at the time, who was leaving our barista gig to go to grad school, and included a black-and-white version of Phantasia Dakotacurl in that-- she loved it, and agreed that he was a good boy, and he became a bit of a mascot for our shop after that.
I'll be real with you, since you've made it this far into a very niche essay about a .jpg of a cat I didn't even know in real life-- 2007-2008 was not a great time in my life. I was finishing my undergraduate degree, the economy was collapsing around us, and I was moving out of one unhealthy relationship...and into another. And this picture of a cat felt like a friend in those times. And the longer I've kept him around, the stronger that bond is. "It's just a jpg of a (probably) dead cat, Shack, you say! It is an entirely imaginary relationship that you have with this image." And that's true, that's fair. I'm not saying it's alive-- I am saying that something doesn't need to be alive or real for you to have a meaningful relationship with it, for it to have an impact on your life. And sometimes you don't know what that impact is, or what meaning gets caught up in the way we relate to the objects in our life. And then all of the sudden its fifteen years later, and the traces of this cat's real life have faded from our minds, from the internet, from the world, and yet, because of some algorithm in its infancy, I found this picture, and I decided to hold onto it. To hold onto a thousand disparate copies of it across more than a dozen devices, to put it up as a representation of my self in the weird, strange world of the internet. I built a home for myself online with Phantasia Dakotacurl, he was there with me when I made my first forays into the world of queerness, of my own identity, body, and sense of self. If I wasn't comfortable with my real face, my real body, Phantasia Dakotacurl could be a stand-in for me-- the himbo I didn't know I wanted to be.
Now I have my own cats, himbos in their own right, two big boys whose pictures you can see elsewhere on this website. But I don't use their pictures as my profile for things. Because they're their own boys, they're not "me" the way the Phantasia Dakotacurl picture is. I say the picture, not the cat-- because the cat is not me, and I don't actually know the cat. My relationship is with the image, and the idea of the cat which it portrays. But he still remains important to me, and truly a part of my digital identity. So, I want to make sure to give him his own spot here on the internet again, as a tribute and a thank you.
I also think this is an important story in why a free and open internet is so important. Why websites matter, and why preserving them matters. I brought Phantasia Dakotacurl into the social media age with me, by making him my profile pic, I made sure that there were facsimiles of his image across the apps, and subsequently stored in servers across the world. But he faded from the web. The American Cat Fancier Association’s website was never going to break the internet, but as online discourse moved into social media spaces, and Big Wikipedia exercised more and more control over what was valuable meaningful, useful information online, those sites became ghost towns. And their links rotted, the images disappeared, their site hit counters slowly stopped ticking.
And the loss of a single cat picture to history doesn't seem like that much, there are plenty more great cat pics out there, and more being made each day. But relationships are built over time, and when time gets flattened into only the now-- which is what social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter did so well-- it becomes more and more difficult to build meaningful relationships with others. My ability to form a bond with a jpg of a silly-looking cat is not unusual, it is profoundly mundane, a fundamental and universal human action. How many of us favor one coffee mug over the others, or have a certain tree that they look forward to seeing change its leaves each year? Those relationships are real, and they help shape how we move through the world, how we measure time, and how we conceptualize ourselves. And they are built on shared space, shared time. The coffee mug is important to you because it's the right size, it feels right in your hand, it has a funny quip on it warning your coworkers to leave you alone before you've had your coffee which always and invariably makes them laugh, it was given to you by your sister, and it makes you think of her. That tree in the park was leafless and bare when you moved into the neighborhood a few Januarys ago, and you watched it return to life that first spring, as you found your own way in a new place, and when its leaves turned red that first fall, you couldn't believe you'd both made it that far. And each season after that, you've both born witness to the other's growth and changes. Maintaining these connections matters. Making and maintaining a web where connections can get made in their own way, not just threaded linearly as replies, responses, updates, pushed outwards infinitely as broadcasts matters. A web where homes are built.
And so, for me, being able to trace the provenance of this image of a cat, to be able to say at least a little bit who he was and where he came from, means a huge amount. It is a validation of that history, a piece of evidence of the passage of time, and a way for me to see for myself how much I've grown and changed in that time, and the home I’ve built for myself here. When I first found the Phantasia Dakotacurl image, I would have told you that I was a Christian, monogamous, heterosexual woman (I would not have described myself as cis because I did not know that word and certainly didn't have a framework for understanding cis-ness vs trans-ness, but regardless I Definitely wouldn't have said I was trans) And today, I am literally NONE of those things. So much about me is different, but I saw myself in that stupid-looking cat in 2008, and I see myself in him today in 2024.
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