Let’s begin by opening the box or at least pretending to. Like Schrödinger’s cat, this article exists in a liminal state between truth and fiction, elegance and absurdity, feline and philosophical. If you observe it closely enough, it might become one thing. If you don’t, it might become something else. In the age of alternative facts, quantum uncertainty might be the most accurate news source available. We’re going to explore this strange space where Japanese philosophy, Western art, silent cartoon cats, and shredded paintings all collide and try not to knock over anything too valuable on the way.
Cats, as it turns out, are perfect metaphors for this mess. They demand belief without evidence, affection without warning, and tolerance without apology. Japan understands this intrinsically. Just look at the Maneki Neko, the beckoning cat often perched next to cash registers and shrine entrances. She’s waving at customers, at luck, at something unseen and each raised paw is said to mean something different. But who really knows? Is she summoning good fortune or just signaling that we’ve misunderstood everything? Much like alternative facts, her true intent depends on the angle, the lighting, and whether or not you’ve had your second coffee.
Then there’s Hello Kitty, the icon of Japanese soft power. She has no mouth, which makes her the perfect corporate ambassador in a post-truth world. She cannot lie, because she cannot speak, but then again, she also cannot tell the truth. Sanrio, her creators, once clarified that she isn’t even a cat but a British schoolgirl named Kitty White. Of course. Nothing says “logical consistency” like a feline girl from England who became the face of Japanese pop culture and several domestic airlines. She stands as a testament to the most important rule of branding: if the fiction sells, print it on everything.
Which brings us, naturally, to Jenny. Our metaphorical fourth cat. Jenny is not historical, factual, or even particularly well-behaved. She’s the cat who keeps showing up in the middle of other stories, lounging across timelines, hiding in art galleries, and rewriting artist statements in her sleep. She claims to have known Duchamp personally and insists she once posed for a Hokusai sketch. Whether or not any of that is true depends on whether you’re willing to believe a cat who can hold a paintbrush and also file her own taxes.
Truth in the art world, like a sleeping tabby, is frequently decorative. Take Banksy, for instance. The anonymous artist pulled off one of the most iconic stunts of our time by shredding his own artwork just moments after it sold for over a million dollars. The result: Love Is in the Bin. Critics called it genius. Collectors called it profitable. Cats, if asked, would simply call it Tuesday. The whole performance had the exact energy of a Maine Coon annihilating your mid-century modern sofa while maintaining eye contact. And just behind them, in the Louvre, Mona Lisa smirks, not because she knows the answer, but because she already saw the cat do it and chose not to intervene.
Art, at its best, is a high-stakes version of make-believe. Consider four artists who made truth optional and fiction profitable: Marcel Duchamp, who once declared “art is either plagiarism or revolution” while submitting a urinal as a sculpture; Yayoi Kusama, who painted her world into polka-dotted infinity and proved that obsession could be beautiful; Yoko Ono, who asked people to scream into the wind and somehow made it profound; and Takashi Murakami, who turned anime aesthetics into gallery gold and then merged them with Louis Vuitton bags. Each of them embraced contradiction, myth, and spectacle. Each gave us art that made us question what was real, what was not, and whether it even mattered.
Philosophy, especially in Japan, has long had a cozy relationship with uncertainty. Take wabi-sabi, the beauty of imperfection a concept that comforts those of us with scratched kitchenware and unresolved existential crises. Mushinteaches us to act without attachment, like a cat sprinting across the piano keys at 3 a.m. Shikata ga nai – it cannot be helped explains both Japan’s national fondness for fax machines and our continued belief in wearable tech that tells us we’re stressed. And oubaitori, the idea that no one should compare themselves to others, serves as a quiet antidote to every influencer who insists that their morning routine involves sunrise meditation and kale.
This tolerance for contradiction isn’t a flaw, it’s a feature. Japanese philosophy allows for a reality that isn’t fixed, where silence can be profound, and a broken cup can be more beautiful than a new one. In this sense, it’s not so different from Western postmodernism, just more elegantly worded, and less likely to involve performance art involving yogurt.
Of course, no deep dive into fractured realities would be complete without a few quotes that confirm everything and nothing. “Facts are stubborn things,” said Mark Twain, “but statistics are more pliable.” Adam Savage once declared, “I reject your reality and substitute my own,” which should probably be the official motto of the internet. Someone (possibly a physicist, possibly a bartender) noted, “The cat could be dead, but let’s not rush to judgment.” And in The Matrix, a child reminds us, “There is no spoon.” Which is what your cat would also say, moments before knocking it off the counter and watching it clatter to the floor.
In the end, alternative facts are just well-dressed fictions with good publicists. They comfort us, confuse us, and occasionally get us elected. They exist in art, commerce, history, and household pets. Some wave. Some shred things. Some smile enigmatically. Some stare blankly with no mouth. And all of them remind us that reality, like a cat, does not care whether or not you understand it, it’s going to do what it wants anyway.
So maybe the truth is that we need a little unreality now and then. A little ambiguity. A little room for cats and artists and contradictory philosophies to sprawl across our perfectly ordered world and mess things up just enough to make us think.
Jenny, of course, agrees. She’s curled up on a centuries-old canvas in a museum basement somewhere, purring softly while quietly erasing the artist’s signature with her tail.
Author’s Note:
This article was written under the philosophical influence of four cats, one pot of tea, and mild existential dread. Jenny, despite not being real, refused to leave the draft alone. Banksy, if you’re reading this: the couch was NOT insured, please help with some street art, not an ally cat though.Hello Kitty, if you’re reading this: we hear you, even without a mouth.
And if you’ve made it this far and still aren’t sure what’s true and what isn’t, congratulations. You’ve officially entered the purring, paradoxical, philosophical box of “maybe.” Please don’t close the lid yet — … Because …
P.S
“Well, I guess a topic such as Alternative Facts might need a rewrite about Alternative Facts – just as an Alternative Fact to the original Alternative Facts.”
Alternative Facts, Feline Acts, and the Mona Lisa’s Smirk
Let’s begin, as all sensible philosophical inquiries should, by opening a box—preferably one that may or may not contain a cat. Schrödinger’s infamous feline has long occupied a dual state of being, both alive and dead until observed. It’s a classic metaphor for uncertainty, quantum physics, and now, perhaps, journalism. In 2025, the cat has clawed its way out of the box and onto the internet, where it’s now both meme and metaphor, simultaneously adorable and unnerving. But what if the real question wasn’t about whether the cat is alive or dead, but whether it ever existed in the first place?
Enter the age of alternative facts. A post-truth jungle where Hello Kitty, born in England, raised in Japan, and famously lacking a mouth, reigns supreme. She’s a cultural ambassador of ambiguity. Is she a cat? A girl? A living plush? She insists she’s not a cat, but let’s be honest, she’s not not a cat either. Her enigmatic silence could be interpreted as a Zen koan, or perhaps a refusal to engage with the absurdities of modern branding. In a world where you can be born in London but speak only in kawaii expressions, who’s to say what’s real anymore?
And what of Jenny, our Anglo-Japanese protagonist from an earlier article, who may or may not be descended from a long line of Miki-Neko? She too lives in that liminal feline state, neither fully here nor there, belonging to both cultures and perhaps none, chasing red laser dots of identity across tatami mats and cobblestones alike. Her story, equal parts myth, manga, and mild existential crisis, reminds us that the borders between fiction and fact are often drawn in sand. Or litter.
Art, naturally, has a long history of playing with these illusions. Banksy, that international phantom of graffiti, once shredded his own painting moments after it sold for a record price at auction. It was a perfectly timed performance, a wink at the absurdity of the art world, and perhaps a subtle nod to how cats treat your best furniture. One minute it’s pristine, the next it’s confetti. If you’ve ever come home to find your sofa in tatters, you already understand performance art on a visceral level.
Then there’s Mona Lisa, whose smile is either bemused, bored, or biding her time. Is she smiling at Banksy? At the cat shredding the couch? Or at us, desperately searching for truth in smirks, memes, and art history TikToks? Leonardo’s famous subject might as well be the patron saint of alternative facts. She’s been a mother, a mistress, a man in drag, a clone, and a coffee logo. She’s survived centuries, digital manipulation, and Dan Brown. Her expression hasn’t changed, which is more than we can say for Twitter.
To better understand our collective confusion, we turn to the four cats of modern myth. First, Schrödinger’s conceptual conundrum. Second, Hello Kitty, the silent mascot of cultural crossover. Third, Jenny, the half-baked British-Japanese hybrid of identity politics and fur. And fourth, the Miki-Neko, those lucky beckoning cats, waving you into shops with the promise of prosperity, only to make you spend 1,800 yen on strawberry-shaped socks you didn’t know you needed. Each cat represents a different layer of reality: quantum, commercial, personal, and spiritual. Together, they form a fluffy, inscrutable Voltron of meaning.
Their artistic counterparts also number four: Banksy with his mystery and irony, Kusama with her polka-dot infinity, Hokusai with his waves of woodblock nostalgia, and Takashi Murakami with his commercial psychedelia. These artists blur lines between sincerity and satire, between gallery and gift shop. Their work, like our feline icons, dances at the edge of authenticity. It’s in these contradictions, where art meets absurdity and tradition meets kitsch, that we glimpse a certain kind of Yuugen (幽玄): a deep, mysterious beauty that cannot be fully explained.
This is where Japanese philosophy purrs its way into our story. Wabi-Sabi teaches us to embrace imperfection, much like a scratched-up wall proudly displaying its claw marks. Mono no Aware reminds us of the fleeting sadness of a disappearing sunbeam – the kind cats chase with reverence. Oubaitori whispers, don’t compare one cat’s nap schedule to another’s hustle. And of course, Shikata ga nai – sometimes the cat just knocks the vase off the shelf, and you must simply accept it. This is life.
Quotes? Oh yes. In the spirit of our feline fours:
- “Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.” — Picasso
- “If I fits, I sits.” — Every cat
- “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” — Aldous Huxley
- “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” — Albert Einstein
Each quote is a pawprint on the freshly raked sand of our logic garden. They circle the idea of truth, but never catch it—because truth, like a laser pointer, keeps moving.
So what are we to do in this fuzzy fog of half-truths, quantum cats, and smiling enigmas? Perhaps nothing. Or perhaps we’re meant to simply enjoy the spectacle. Laugh at the absurdity. Pet the cat. Question the canvas. And maybe—just maybe—shred a few assumptions like an overpriced sofa.
Alternative Author’s Note:
I take no responsibility for this Alternative Fact rewrite of the Alternative Facts or if I repeated and Alternative Facts—they may not be Alternative facts. Also, again I take no responsibility for any real or imagined cats harmed in the writing of this article, again. Also, any resemblance to actual philosophies, historical art movements, or café mascots mentioned in the first part of this long drama is purely coincidental—except when it’s not and may be a fact—which I can’t garentee. If this article made sense on the second read, please reread while squinting slightly and turning your head 23 degrees. If it didn’t, congratulations. You’re one step closer to enlightenment.
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