Part of the joy of living with cats is their refusal to take seriously any issue unrelated to their food, water, litter box, and need for human attention. Your entire family may have just died and the cat will not care as long as it is still pet and fed when it wants. Your city could be consumed by flames or in the process of a hostile takeover by extraterrestrial bug monsters and, as long as everything within the cat’s environment is as it should be, none of this will matter.
Case in point: political scientist, historian, and activist Dr. Jerzy Targalski was speaking to Dutch news program Nieuwsuur about Poland’s democratic crisis when his cat decided the discussion was a waste of its distinguished owner’s time and crawled up onto his neck to mug for the camera.
Watch as Targalski attempts to continue speaking on the contested removal of Supreme Court president Małgorzata Gersdorf, an act that continues the deeply unsettling erosion of democracy in Poland by President Andrzej Duda and the right wing PiS party, while his cat attempts to distract from disturbing political talk with its furry little face and delightful white paws. Feel conflicted emotions as Targalski somehow maintains a straight face, barrelling onward to a description of Poland’s political freefall as Lisio (which translates, quite adorably, to “little fox”) bats its tail in front of his face, nuzzles his head, and licks his ear.
Another view of the scene, tweeted by Nieuwsuur reporter Rudy Bouma, shows the genesis of the moment, Lisio digging its claws into Targalski’s jacket in order to hijack an interview that has nothing to do with feathered toys, salmon treats, or mesmerizing rays of sunlight.
In case you assumed this was a one-off incident, be assured that Lisio is something of a supporting figure in Targalski’s public life, deciding to what extent it will intrude on televised interviews on a case-by-case basis. Here, for instance, the sweet baby kotek is content to maintain a subtler role, merely chair-perching and lap-sitting:
Lisio is a very good cat.
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