Qiaochu Qin

What do animals mean to us? We domesticate animals as pets and keep them, arrange their lives according to our will, animals became integrated into human society, at the same time, we adapted to their presence. In this process, what have animals gained and lost? And what have we gained and lost?

As an animal lover, and an owner of a cat, I am interested in what animals means to humans. In my practice, I used people and their cats as a starting point to explore the original, existing and potential relationships between animals and humans. In the past, people kept animals mostly for functional purposes, such as using cats to catch mice, using dogs to guard the house. Animals and humans, as two individuals, their lives should be parallel to each other. But in today's relationship, people tend to feed animals to satisfy their emotional needs, the autonomy of both parties has been lost. We may think that we could communicate with animals through eyes, actually we will never understand each other. We always think that the best that can be done for an animal is taking good care of them, but that's just human's thought. The freedom they enjoy in the human environment is artificial. They are becoming dependent on the life we provide for them. Animals have integrated into human life and started to live like humans, also, we have adapted to their presence and accepted everything about them.

I've heard 'I think I'm controlled by my cat.' more than once, so it seems that as we domesticate animals, animals also domesticate us. When a cat belongs to me, I also belong to the cat.