Why did I start Kalikho? It’s a question I get a lot, especially from people who know me for philosophy.

Here's why...

Personal Reasons

1. Cat fanaticism: I’m a die-hard cat person. This isn’t sudden. I was like this in embryo. My sole, enduring mission as a child was to learn “cat language.” In the first supervisory meeting of my PhD, my supervisor asked what my big life goal was.

“To be able to talk to cats.”

“Fantastic! Don’t give up on that.”

A couple of years ago a friend told me that they’d been looking back on their A-level Art coursework and realised they were basically still doing the same topic a decade later.

When I think back on all the research I’ve done on ‘translatability’…. (Psychedelics too - is there anything more intertwined with the idea of communicating across species, bridging the gap between human and non-human worlds, than psychedelics?)

It’s the same turtle — how do we translate experiences that most people would call non-ordinary?

2. Creative diversification / practicing what I preach / rehabilitation: After about a decade of higher education in literature and philosophy, I came to the conclusion that what most people in academia really need is less verbiage. Or at least a more experimental relationship with language. The irony of writing this in a thesis, footnotes and all, wasn’t lost on me. So, consider this a kind of recovery from the dull and endless strife — a step into the light of things, with cats as my teachers. Cats, via design, art, videos, music, and this thing called ‘marketing’ that I really must stop avoiding.

3. Natural convergence: 1 + 2.

4. Flexible hours: I have a turbulent relationship with time, and if I can’t work on a non-linear (usually night-based) schedule, then within a week or two I become a dreary robot woman who can guess the time within three minutes.

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Cultural Reasons

5. Memorial garments: We’re a bit death-phobic, aren’t we? (Unless you’re reading this and are Mexican.) I’m not being funny, but I feel as though, while urns on shelves and skeletons in the backyard (just kidding, no one can afford a backyard in this century) have their place, there’s room for a bit more pizzazz! I made a shirt from the fur pattern of Little Cat, a stray I bonded with but couldn’t save. Now a part of her gets to hang out. It’s magical, and also just a very nice shirt.

6. Meanwhile, leopard print LOST its pizzazz: Last year (2024) saw the monumental high street reunion of leopard print. Not that it ever really went anywhere. But I’ve analyzed this extensively and decided that the reason it bothered me was that it got so ubiquitous that it neutralised. For me, leopard print is neutral anyways, but that’s not true for everyone (or at least it wasn’t). I suspect that much of its power rides on this subtle discrepancy. My solution: cat prints. Many of the same connotations, but without the high street drenching.

7. A subculture unto themselves: Even if you took all the physical cats out of the equation (which my phone autocorrected to “equator”), cat people would still constitute a subculture. Possibly including, but certainly not limited to, inclinations such as: Tarot (and/or other forms of divination); bands like The Cure and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds; films like Lost in Translation and anything that remotely resembles Lost in Translation; novels like anything written by Haruki Murakami; endless particularities about stationery; artists like Leonora Carrington or anyone who paints ambiguous, adorably deranged, spindly creatures. Oh, and tattoos, probably. They are often late, but also likely to be overprepared. They are often neurotic, but also likely to be subversive in some way.

8. Continuing the reclamation of the ‘crazy cat person’ stereotype: It’s almost chic now.

9. Feeling more feline: This might belong under ‘personal reasons,’ but it’s worth repeating. Cat patterns feel powerful. Clad in feline, as it were. (Is that the right usage? Still not sure.)

10. Animal print sidesteps the formal-informal spectrum (for women, anyway): This is probably because it evokes the more-than-human world. Either way it’s curious!

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Philosophical Reasons

11. Fabric, superstitions, and sculpting one’s self-narrative: For many people, getting dressed is steeped in superstition. Which is kind of a cultural anomaly, or could be the path of least resistance to a more animated cosmology.

12. Symbolic system: Cat breeds and fur patterns are familiar but flexible symbols. Ginger cats are outgoing, black cats are misunderstood, ragdolls are surf bros. There’s enough variety for a comprehensive set of cultural archetypes, but their meanings are loose enough to be genuinely open-ended. This is rare.

13. Cat people vs. dog people typologies: At this point I can differentiate cat people and dog people with about 98% accuracy just from looking at them.

14. Multiple selves metaphor: Western culture is heavy-handed with the assumption that the self is singular. It’s so pervasive that even the people who question it tend to live by it. I have an alternative metaphor that involves 12 cats in a boat. More on that soon.

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Community

15. Helping cats in need: 10% of profits go to local animal welfare. Actually, it’s way more if you count the abandoned kitten who has become my best friend. The beautiful thing is that I wouldn’t have even crossed paths with him if not for this project. (Love youu, Suki.)

16. Sustainable fashion: Everything is largely made from recycled plastic bottles. (No, you can’t tell.) How cool is that? The pieces don’t stretch, don’t shrink, and they’ll never fade.

17. Finally, some tasteful cat customization: I despair when I browse Etsy and see the customizable cat listings. I’m not saying I’d never wear a shirt that said ‘cat mom’ with Suki’s vectorized face embroidered on it, but I think I’d rather match my cat than brandish him.

18. Educational platform: I want to continue developing Kalikho into a platform for absurd-but-educational cat content. There’s so much cat talk to be had, and it crosses just about every discipline: their history, evolution, behavior, self-domestication, internet culture, LOLspeak, mythologies, the enigma of purring, and a thousand other things.