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Look, I get it; we’re in the midst of a self-loathing epidemic wherein we dependently shovel down products, external comforts, and other such stimuli so as to prevent ourselves from being alone with our thoughts for even a microsecond. Being left to one’s own devices, after all, will inevitably lead to realizations along the lines of “At some point, someone is going to think about you for the final time in all of history.”
The scariest part? You don’t even have to be mentally capable of existentialism to be afraid of yourself. In fact, you don’t even need to have a brain; just look at how this large piece of dryer lint that looks suspiciously like a cat is responding to the mere sight of himself:
Captured by TikTok‘s @ozzyandboomer, the 40-second video above documents one kitty’s spiritual trip across the universe and back again, all on account of being greeted with his reflection for the first time. His muscles and eyelids are locked firmly in place, stiffening his body and perpetuating a gaze that’s overflowing with dread, all while his owner Jesse helplessly tries to comfort him by telling the kitty that it’s just himself he’s seeing (that’s the problem, Jesse!).
The cherry on top of it all are the lowercase wails that the kitty emits in hopes of coping with the sight of himself; a wail that’s remarkable similar to that of R2-D2 of Star Wars fame.
Now, the explosive relationship between mirrors and pets go way back, so our dusty protagonist here is hardly having a unique experience. It’s easy to chalk up a cat’s fear of their own reflection to the fact that they are not self-aware and therefore can’t recognize themselves in the mirror and take their reflection to be another, unfamiliar cat, but there’s another layer to their bafflement. According to Petplan, cats may be extra-suspicious of their reflection on account of this mystery cat not having any scent to go along with it, thereby subverting the cat’s understanding of how they perceive things. This is, presumably, the true feline equivalent of an existential crisis.
And how do they deal with it? By eventually accepting that this mysterious, scentless cat whose existence makes no sense, just happens to exist in the same space as them, all in spite of how cats traditionally quantify their reality. Indeed, we may laugh at their first encounter with their reflection, but perhaps we could learn a thing or two from our feline furbabies as we seek to better ourselves as a species.