David O'Mahony: What 325k people looking at photos of my cat showed about our desire for connections

The sheer wholesomeness of what went on in my small corner of the web was a refreshing antidote to the poison of rage politics that infests everywhere else, writes David O'Mahony

I was not anticipating Pepper racking up one, then two, then 20, then 2,000, then a cumulative 13,000 likes.

My phone was on the verge of exploding for three days straight.

Sadly, it was not Netflix looking for the rights to one of my stories. Happily, it was because my cat was having a viral moment.

It was a stupid, throwaway little post, meant mostly to amuse myself. It was that the cat, Pepper, had discovered the taste of ragu and she was now hounding me for more. 

There was a photo — the obligatory cat tax, as it’s known — captioned “where is it dad, why are you so cruel”. And then I gave it no more thought, expecting maybe family members or whatnot to like it.

After a couple of weeks of my social posts getting little traction — something that happens to a lot of writers — I was not anticipating Pepper racking up one, then two, then 20, then 2,000, then a cumulative 13,000 likes.

The overwhelming opinion was to just give in and give her more food (for the record, she is well fed). 

The reactions

This is perhaps to be expected, because if you’ve spent any time on the internet you’ll have noticed how cat people call to each other from across the stars, usually to tell each other that their cat does the same [insert unhinged thing], albeit in part of the universe where everything is upside down like, I don’t know, Texas or something.

Then came the commenters commenting in character as one of their cats, which is more or less just the same as many brands tend to behave on Threads — when I posted that I was deleting Microsoft Teams for a week, the Teams social media account replied to commend me.

There was the cohort who seemed convinced I was about to kill the cat, because onions and tomatoes are toxic to them (you’d swear I’d given Pepper a full bowl of ragu). There was the surprisingly numerous group telling me their cat fancied my cat (a Hinge for pets is evidently an untapped market). 

There was the woman who asked me if I was married because she didn’t see a wedding ring in my profile photo, having evidently zoomed way, way in to check (thanks, I guess; fun fact, I actually have two wedding rings, I just don’t wear them much because I know I’m married).

What's your view on this issue?

You can tell us here

Mostly, there were the hundreds of people sharing pictures of their own cats, or them with their cats, or little stories about their cats doing something demented (which isn’t hard to come up with, as any cat parent will tell you). Those little comments went off in their own directions, as is the glory and terror of the internet.

But Dear Reader, it didn’t stop. Because early in what became a whirlwind, I’d posted something else about how, despite being one of Ireland’s most prolific short story writers, people were mostly interested in pictures of my cat and that I didn’t blame them.

Reader, she got more likes on that one (but not views) than the first, somewhere north of 18,000. I still get the occasional ding that more are coming in.

By the time Pepper’s 15 minutes were up, at which point I reasoned it was safe to use my phone again, some 325,000 people had seen her photos and the feeling from writer friends was that I should let her do all my marketing from now on.

Somewhere in the anarchy, I picked up a hefty number of horror fans — they want the account to be a mix of horror and cats, and who am I to argue? — and, bemusingly, actually sold books on the back of it. All in the US, too, where the majority of my readers reside (hi everybody, yes I’ve written another book, no it’s not out yet but it’s not far).

The connections

Mostly, though, it was the manifestation of that simple, almost burning desire to be around like-minded souls. We all want to belong, one way or another. And what more universal way to do that than by connecting through a shared love of pets? 

It’s more likely to break down national and social boundaries than music, art, or money. Everybody gets what they want, and nobody ends up feeling like they’ve come off worse in an uneven transaction. 

As a colleague and I noted on one of my publishers’ Discords, the pulling power of cats on social media is not only unparalleled, but a reminder of more optimistic, innocent times.

Honestly, the sheer wholesomeness of what went on in my small corner of the web was a refreshing antidote to the poison of rage politics that infests everywhere else. No doubt, everybody else felt the same.

And really, if we spent more time finding the most basic common ground, however tentative, maybe we’d all be just a little better off.