Cats Might Just Be Enlightened
I recently went for a walk, as I often do, when I encountered one of the neighborhood cats sitting on the side of the road. Usually, local cats are shifty and cautious around strangers, going out of their way to avoid unwanted human attention. But this cat simply sat there. It remained completely relaxed and utterly unbothered by my approach as I walked past. I don’t know how or why, but a thought popped into my head that I haven’t been able to shake since: Cats might just be enlightened.
Intuitively, this makes sense to me, even though it feels difficult to articulate why. What is it about cats that radiates enlightenment, and what do I actually mean by that?
Though I’ve never owned a cat, a lifetime of encounters, amplified by the internet's endless catalog of feline videos, has given me confidence in assessing what it means to be a cat at its core. It is often said that while we may be able to own dogs, it is cats who own us. The 16th-century philosopher Michel De Montaigne captured this dynamic perfectly when he mused, "When I play with my cat, how do I know that she is not passing the time with me more than I am with her?"
If I had to summarize what it means to be a cat in one sentence, I would do so like this: Cats always do exactly what they want. They seem to possess an unshakeable self-sovereignty to an enviable degree.
But what does a cat’s refusal to compromise have to do with enlightenment? Isn't enlightenment supposed to be a higher state of divine consciousness where one transcends all desire?
That is indeed one way to interpret enlightenment, and traditional texts often insist enlightenment is strictly reserved for human beings. But what if we are defining it incorrectly? Does an enlightened being truly cease desiring food, social connection, or rest? Or is what they transcend not the natural desires that make us human, but the unnatural desires that stem from them? Our natural need for security turns into greed, our need for connection turns into an obsession with status. Perhaps enlightenment simply means the transcendance of these aberrations of natural desire?
I find that Eastern philosophies align surprisingly well with this reframing. Taoism has a concept called Wu Wei which embodies effortless action. In Zen Buddhism, there is a focus on Tathātā, or "suchness": the ability to exist fully in the immediate moment without ego or overthinking.
This is what makes the behaviour of cats so striking. They pursue their natural desires unashamedly. They play, hunt, sleep, reproduce, and explore without guilt or pretense. When a cat sleeps, it just sleeps; it doesn't lie awake stressing over yesterday's missed mouse or tomorrow's vet visit. They do not desire anything more or less than what is natural for a cat to desire. They are exactly who they are supposed to be, at every single moment.
Even in their most ridiculous moments, cats remain entirely unselfconscious. A cat never feels embarrassed after slipping off a table or missing a jump. They move on so instantly, as if nothing happened, that we may even wonder if they registered their failure as a failure to begin with.
Perhaps calling cats enlightened is a step too far. After all, enlightenment is notoriously difficult to define, often described as an experience beyond concepts that resists being put into words. But if nothing else, there is a lot to learn from cats and their wisdom is not to be underestimated.