51. Rebecca Van Laer's Zoosemiotics: The Meaning of Meow, the Meaning of Life

“Consciousness stands in the way of a good life. …the feline mind is one and undivided. Pain is suffered and forgotten, and the joy of life returns.”

– John Gray, Feline Philosophy

Rebecca Van Laer’s Cat (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025) packs nine lives of feline wisdom into a slim but satisfying volume. One of these lives is serene, domesticated: a diaristic jaunt through the anxieties, hopes, and occluded memories awakened by the many cats in Van Laer’s own life. Another is feral, possessed of incurable zoomies: a kaleidoscopic survey of all things furred and mewling, traversing online memescapes, the annals of psychology, and a shelf or two of postmodern thinkers to comprise a rich but eminently accessible compendium of cat-adjacent insights. In these, seven or more lives may be lived, if all too briefly – but such is the way of all cats, our brilliant but transient familiars.

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library

There is no better introduction to today’s discussion of the text than Van Laer’s own words, from Chapter 2 of Cat:

These meows are not part of some universal cat code; they are a private language between cat and person, a result of the cat testing out a range of cries, mews, and chirps calibrated over time to get the best response. Cats make an effort, certainly, to hone their skills, but this is on their own terms, outside of formal strictures, and the resulting language is pure signifier.

And now we delve into the realm of pure signifier, our host’s bewitching domain.

Rebecca Van Laer's Cat is available for preorder from Bloomsbury Academic.