Catify Your Playlist in 2025
Meowza hoomans,
A happy Mew Year to you! And with the new year comes a slightly redesigned newletter with a new logo (meowy!) and the newsletter itself is somewhat shorter. Having fewer facts on your email display is purreferable to cramming every little fascinating detail into the monthly newsletter. Cats need an area to retreat, and so do newsletters. The facts are still there - in the Meow Factor blog.
Anyway, if one of your New Year’s resolutions includes a digital detox, postpone that a bit - because the digital cat world is calling you
The newsletter’s resolutions for this issue are
🐈⬛ Catifiy your playlist
😻 Watch “Lord of the Whiskers”
Get your catnip ready and enjoy your short trip into the Cativerse.
Catify your playlist
Already in the 19th century, the cat's "Meow" made a grand entrance into music. Fast forward 200 years, Rossini's "Duetto buffo di due gatti" (duet for two cats) with its simple but effective lyrics ("Meow, meow") is here on YouTube in various renditions, performed by famous and not-so famous singers.
And now we have many more songs by, for, and about cats. Get your ear pawds ready, get streaming on Pawtify or MewTube or wherever, and SING ALONG meow!
[Linguistically speaking, we are dealing here with multimodality (i.e. communicating via audio, images, and text) and intertextuality (i.e. pop-cultural references to other songs and videos). Looking at it from a cat-lover’s purrspective, it’s cats, cats, cats, cats - as we see them, as we understand them, as we love them.]
Check out the videos of “Bohemian Catsody”, the CatRapper, Crayzee_Cat, The Kiffness, Cat Lovers Community TV, Linuccio, and Sympawnies by Noam Oxman in the post “Your Playlist on Pawtify” on the Meow Factor blog. ➡️
Lord of the Whiskers
LOTR is such an icon in popular culture that no explanation is needed - neither for the images nor for the names in “Lord of the Whisker”, an Instagram reel posted by the user @dai.dream.24.
The characters have been catified with meowphemes (purr, hiss, claw, and the like). Here you have a small selection of the names: Frodopaws, Aragpurr, Legoclaw, Sarumeow, Uruk-hiss, Saurpaw. There are more LOTR characters waiting for you, and you could test yourself in how well you know the book and the movie trilogy.
Concerning the use of AI: Just as the Internet was invented for people to share cat photos, AI has been created for people to generate cats. [note: this refers to the “Cute Cat Theory” by Ethan Zuckerman].
For all the names and the reel itself, read the research note “Lord of the Whiskers” on the Meow Factor blog. ➡️
That’s all for this month. Fank mew furry much for reading, and looking forward to dispensing my linguistic catnip to your inbox 📦 next month.
Feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone who might be interested in cats and language.
