Last Life of the Cat

The animation was my created by me,
my boss Simon edited the film,
and the music was by 'Six Miles North'
an artist from Belfast.

It was shown in the
Metropolitan Art Centre, Belfast last year,
on the same date as the one on
the billboard in the film.




I pretty much abandoned this as soon as I made it,
because I was busy at the time
and I havent really had a chance to talk about it,
whereas in school I would have had to explain it into the ground
there and then.

I'm not in school but I will do that anyway.
It's not really important, it can mean anything and its as good my guess...
but this is where it came from
and why I did it, incase you care to know,
I'm telling you.

It was originally based on a old japanese children's story,
which is also a buddhist allegory about
a cat that keeps having endless new lives (instead of the nine)
all his lives were different, good and bad but at the same time
they were all the same if you know what I mean.
But in one particular life he meets this white cat.
And in the story they fall in love
 I think, depends on your interpretation.
And the story goes on and you can read it yourself.

"The Cat that Lived a Million Lives" by Sano Yoko, 1977


So 'The Last Life of the Cat' is set in the night up until he meets
the white cat.
Although with my resources, platform, medium and time
I couldn't tell that story in tangible way to the audience
and either way I didn't want it to be a reproduction.
So I decided to make it an abstract, visual story without
really a story to follow.

Anyway we all know the famous shakespeare quote from Hamlet.
"there is no such thing as good or bad, but thinking makes it so"

That idea tends to be the premise of most of my art.
And that inspired the rest of the visuals here. In the Last Life of the Cat,
you see things that to us;
 are happy, sad, ugly, beautiful,
good and bad things.
 Although to the Cat of course, its just more things
and it dosent mean anything to it at all.

Until he sees the White Cat and then he cares very much.
But again to us in real life, we just see two cats, no big deal.

Things don't exist as we see them to.


That aside, at the time it was very rushed. It was done in my own time along side work so
all a lot of things I planned didn't make it into the film and the technique is alittle rough
to say the least. Also looking back some things I intended to show,
weren't clear enough for me. For instance, the girl on the roof with white hair, is contemplating suicide (or supposedto be) but to a lot of people it didn't come across. Or even that she was the same
girl from the billboard.

 Other things I wanted to include
was a cheating couple, a jewellery thief, a man beating his wife, a lost child on the street,
a road accident (red car) and a tiger escaped from the zoo.

Maybe next time.


What I intended to do, was to try and hold up the ugly, disgusting things in life against the
beautiful, amazing things. To compare. And see the real nature of the whole.
What I see is the balance. One gives the other meaning, all the ugly makes the beautiful beautiful.
And without one, its neither.

So in reality, nothing really gets "better" or "worse" because there's so such thing.
Things can happen, yeah, but without all the suffering, pain, misery, hunger
 in the first place
all those things you want, have, love and care for- you would never appreciate
and everything would be mean nothing.

Moving on. cough*

The Cafe is named after my other boss, who got me this opportunity to show it in the MAC and got me doing it in the first place actually.

The opera scene came to me when I may or may not have been high.

And the song the girl is listening to out her window is a song called "Cats" by Cansei de ser sexy.
It was a coincidence too, because it only mentions the word 'cats' once in the lyrics and Simon took a three second clip out at random and 'cats' happened to be in it. Unintentional.

The fountain at the end, is a real fountain I came across in Budapest in a park, while my mum and dad were fighting. It wasn't the grandest or the biggest one there by a mile but It was my favourite.
It was graffiti'd (I also didn't get to put that in the film)
But it was almost tasteful. That with the expression's of the statues, it was one of my
favourite things in the city.

I could tell you more, buts there no point.
Have to leave something for myself.
And you know I'll never say.
Artists...