By Laura Whitmer

If we all strain our collective memory, it is possible to remember December of 2019. A simpler time, pre-pandemic, prior to the hell we all know as 2020. A time when Tom Hooper’s movie adaptation of the musical Cats was what a lot of people on the internet were upset about.

My roommate and I have a long history of taking edibles and watching terrible movies, and Cats has been high on our list since its release. Finally, in mid-August, our moment with Cats arrived. I knew almost nothing about the musical at the beginning of our viewing experience. Not even a minute in, and I was confused. Were they singing in gibberish?

Before the first song ended, we were on Wikipedia looking for answers. In what I wish was the biggest shock of 2020, we learned the musical is based on a collection of poems by T.S. Eliot. He published Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats in 1939 for his grandchildren, which is a pretty cute thing to do, but at what cost? This prompted a follow-up question: What kind of person sets a book of largely nonsensical poems to music, and why do people love it so much?

A few songs in, my hottest Cats take began to form: This musical is just a roll call on the first day of kindergarten, but all the children are cats with strange jobs, like Skimbleshanks the railway cat. Any “plot” beyond that is almost non-existent. Yes, Jennifer Hudson’s character has been banished from the group and is living in isolation. Yes, the new cat on the scene ultimately convinces the group to welcome her back into their feline arms and give her the gift of a new life. But these are small moments in a long movie with nothing but strangely horny cat dances in between.

The confusing songs are further complicated by the visuals. One of the film’s main critiques is that the actors look exactly like themselves, just in too-tight bodysuits. Because these are humans playing cats that still look mostly like humans, the proportions throughout are totally thrown off. After much discussion, we decided that standing up, the actors were supposed to be around the same height as an actual cat, but because actual cats don’t move around on their hind legs, these “cats” came out looking much smaller than any real-world cat would. A turkey leg looks the size of the entire turkey in one cat’s hands. The buildings look absurdly large, yet when they perform on a stage later in the film, it appears to have been built with their proportions in mind. Mr. Hooper, please explain.

It’s impossible to decide which moment is most disturbing, but there’s one that deserves special attention. During Rebel Wilson’s introductory number, a band of mice and a conga line of cockroaches both make cameos. As stressful as it is to watch humans play cats while still looking almost exactly like humans, imagine that same level of humanness in a mouse or cockroach. Now take the horror a step further and imagine a human cat eating that human cockroach.

In the film’s final dance number, the group parades around a fountain lined with lion statues. At which point I have to wonder, in a world where cats look like humans, mice look like humans, and cockroaches look like humans, why do lions look like…lions?

I was left with many questions. Some cats have magical powers, but there’s one cat who is a magician by profession. When he’s performing magic, do the other cats recognize a distinction between his work and that of the actual magical cats? While many cats spent the movie unclothed, some wore outfits. One cat wore pants and suspenders without a shirt underneath. Are we to presume, then, that this cat has actively chosen to be shirtless? Does that mean all cats wearing no clothes at all have chosen nakedness? One can only assume they have not been introduced to the shame of nudity codified in the Bible’s Garden of Eden parable. Perhaps their clothes represent a strive for class elevation — an effort to get closer to the humans they so creepily resemble.

Despite my questions, I would characterize watching Cats mid-pandemic as a positive experience. I was able to completely lose myself in its absurd and disturbing world — and forget about the one we’re living in for a cool 110 minutes. What a comfort to watch something deeply disturbing and know it isn’t real.

Laura Whitmer is currently developing her fiction craft at the Mountainview Low-Residency MFA. She currently lives in Massachusetts where it is legal to purchase and ingest cannabis.