The cost of empathy: $11,000 for a cat.

There was a Newsweek article posted today about Frederick R Lynch, a university professor who spent $11,000 on veterinary bills for his cat. Why would a person pay $11,000 for a three legged, twice pancreatic cat which, at best, had a life expectancy of 600 days after the removal of its leg? In the article the author justified spending this money by writing, “But I have to believe that as a society, we're a long way from 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes, who claimed that animals have no right to humane treatment because they have no souls. Today, I'm one of many who think that higher mammals are self-conscious, spiritual creatures.” I think, however, that this justification only serves to cover the primary reason for spending $11,000 on a cat: emotional attachment and a misunderstanding of empathy.

At the beginning of this article the author wrote, “He'd [the cat] wandered into my life 11 years earlier, an abandoned orange tabby. I'd just lost my 16-year-old Himalayan cat to kidney disease. I wasn't ready for another, much less a stray. But Fritz had a remarkable personality radiating from golden eyes that were almost human.” So after the loss of a cat owned for 16 years this new cat appeared with its “eyes that were almost human”. Not only did this new cat fill the emotional gap left by the deceased 16 year old Himalayan, but also this cat, to the author, had “eyes that were almost human” and this, I think, leads to the idea of mistaken empathy.

Empathy is “one's ability to recognize, perceive and directly feel the emotion of another”. The problem with empathy, though, is that it requires an individual to understand how it is to be the being with which one empathizes. To empathize with a bat one would have to know how it is to be a bat. But, as we learned from Nagel, one cannot know how is it to be a bat unless one is a bat. A human can only ever know what it is to be a human imaginine one’s self to be a bat. In the same way one can never know how it is to be cat unless one is a cat. So whenever a human tries to empathize with a cat they are attempting an impossible task, as they cannot know how it is to be a cat, but rather can only know how it is to be a human.

A good example of the mistakes one makes when empathizing with animals can be found in the statement, “I made my choice—our choice. I hoped Fritz would agree.” Cats do not agree and if cats do agree they do not agree in the same sense that humans agree. The author wrote that he believes cats to be “self-conscious”. As a person who has owned three cats I would argue that cats are not “self-conscious” but rather are “self-aware”. The difference is that a self-aware being is aware of its self as an entity. The monologue of such a being would be, “I’m a cat. I’m a cat. I’m a cat.” Self-conscious means that a being is conscious of its own self and would have the monologue of, “I’m a cat. What is it to be a cat? How ought I cat?” Cats may be self-aware, but cats are not self-conscious. So the idea of a cat agreeing with a medical decision, weighing the costs and benefits, analyzing the course of treatment and the life expectations after treatment, is just plain silly.

So if one cannot know how it is to be a cat, and if cats are not self-conscious, why would one attempt to see cats as self-conscious, tiny furry people with whom one can empathize? I think the answer is the emotional attachment between the owner and the cat. Pet owners imagine their pets to be more than they are because this facilitates the emotional connection which they think exists. When my fish was sick I empathized with it, “How would I feel to have a hole in my head?” but this was a mistake on my part. I cannot know how it is to be a Frontosa, just as the author of that article cannot know how it is to be a cat. How would it be to have cancer as a cat? How would it be to be subject to daily medical regiments as a cat? How can one make medical decisions for a being one does not know how it is to be? The only way to do this is to do what Nagel says we cannot, understand how it is to be something other than what we are.

I think that in the case of this article the author is not paying $11,000 for the well-being of the cat. The author is paying $11,000 to lessen his empathetic suffering and to prolong the cat’s life in an attempt to stave off the inevitable grief the cat’s death will bring. The author is paying $11,000 to make himself feel better by doing what his attempts at empathy lead him to think will make the cat feel better; he’s helping himself.