The best cats on YouTube
A series guaranteed to calm you down
Don’t forget to preorder my book APOCALYPSE: How Catastrophe Transformed Our World and Can Forge New Futures. Zoë Schlanger, author of the fantastic and beautifully written The Light Eaters, says, “This book upended my understanding of the ancient world. Wade renders our deep past in vivid prose, showing us that times of great rupture also bring great possibilities for new ways of living, if we let them. Apocalypse is the best kind of history book: vibrant and vital.”
We are five weeks out from APOCALYPSE pub day, and would you be shocked to learn that I am absolutely, 100% freaking out???? I thought there was no higher level of book publishing uncertainty than working on a proposal for years without knowing if it would sell. And then it sold, and I had to confront the difference between the idealized proposal version and my first draft. And then I had to push back deadlines because of creatively debilitating post-COVID symptoms, again and again. And it turns out that NONE of those inherently uncertain experiences prepared me for this moment of waiting for my book to be Perceived and Received, knowing I can’t change anything. Apparently this is normal.
So I’ve been watching cat videos on YouTube. For pure soothing escapism, I simply must recommend the series “A Cat’s-Eye View of Japan” from NHK World-Japan. The broadcaster sent wildlife photographer Iwago Mitsuaki around the country to film cats in various cities and towns. The origin story isn’t explained, but because people are wearing masks in many of the videos, I’ve chosen to think it was Iwago’s pandemic project, when leaving the country to shoot for National Geographic became impossible and everyone had to find inspiration closer to home.
“A Cat’s-Eye View” is basically an ad campaign for Japanese small towns and their traditional industries and crafts, from doll making to ceramics to fish farming. Many of the cats have jobs, especially in the agricultural and fishing areas, or hang out with their owners while the humans do theirs. It could not succeed more wildly in making all these places look enchanting, and Iwago really does have a gift for putting animals at ease while following them around and filming them. Most of the cats are older and not necessarily adorable in the traditional cute-kitten-video sense, but they all have personalities and relationships, with humans or other cats, that come across brilliantly even in five minutes (the perfect length for a YouTube video, IMO). The next time you’re spiraling out and need to be reminded that not everything in the world is terrible, click here.