Editor’s Note: This is an opinion piece that was rejected by The Barnard Bulletin, Spectator, Bwog, and The Sundial.
In early September, I put my paws on the concrete and visited my older sister, a senior at Barnard, a women’s college affiliated with Columbia University. I accompanied her and my mother on promenades through both Barnard and Columbia’s campuses. As they rolled me around in my $75 pet stroller, I saw pigeons and European starlings idling on College Walk and dogs running on the lawns. Surrounded by the ignorant humans that my family members are, there was an obvious elephant in the room that only a feline would notice: where were all the cats on campus?
My mother suggested that I could live with my sister in her dormitory for her final year of college. I was excited for the chance to live in the Big Apple, but there was a problem: Barnard “prohibits the presence of privately-owned animals on campus,” with the limited exception of service or emotional support pets. I was insulted. I do not owe my human sister — who dresses me up in silly little hats and commands me to “sit” before she gives me a Chicken with Cheese Churu — any service or emotional support.
My hopes of being part of the Columbia community were further shattered when I attended a picnic hosted by The Fed, the school satire paper. I was the only pet there, and a crowd of ignorant two-legs crowded around my picnic blanket to belittle me, scratch my ears, and call me “cute” and a “good girl.” What foolishness, what humiliation. Their ignorant fascination with a feline can only be attributed to school policies that ban cats on campus, reducing us to mere human support machines.
This is the speciesism that PETA warned us about. No matter how “prestigious” an institution is, one that fails to enforce BEI (Biodiversity, Equity, and Inclusion) produces ignorant students who foster a hostile environment for minority animals in the Anthropocene.
After that picnic, I decided that I would return home to my comfortable life in the California suburbs. I will not subject myself to belittlement from human peers. Honestly, I don’t have any career ambitions in life. The hardest work I’ve done is meow and hiss at Rudy, the neighbor’s cat, when he comes too close to the front door. I can’t imagine enrolling in LitHum or a Calculus class.
My fellow cats, I discourage you from applying to Columbia or any of its affiliated programs. I — and surely you — would be better content in the comfort of our own home, giving humans joy — especially men with their low voices that sound like purring — by smelling their toes and rubbing against their legs.
