{"id":74891,"date":"2014-08-04T18:26:19","date_gmt":"2014-08-04T22:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=74891"},"modified":"2014-08-04T18:39:44","modified_gmt":"2014-08-04T22:39:44","slug":"to-serve-and-protect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/08\/04\/to-serve-and-protect\/","title":{"rendered":"To Serve and Protect"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"IMG_0722\"<\/a>

Not, alas, an actual archival photo.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cCats Hate Cops<\/a>\u201d is a tidy black-and-white pamphlet from Research & Destroy<\/em>, a \u201cradical zine collective\u201d based in New York. Its title may seem, to the casual observer, like an editorial statement, but make no mistake: it\u2019s a fact. The zine\u2019s sixty-two pages comprise 150 years of cat-on-cop violence, all of it diligently chronicled by our nation\u2019s newspapers\u2014hard evidence, in other words. The first report is from 1805, when, in Edinburgh, a man attempting to police his dairy met with a cat bite on the neck; the latest is from the Melbourne Age<\/em>, which last January ran a sidebar called \u201cAnatomy of a Cat Attack.\u201d (\u201cPolice close one lane and engage Scratchy, who resists.\u201d Attaboy, Scratchy!)<\/p>\n

Whether these are disconnected incidents or the enactment of a kind of feline political philosophy remains to be seen, but my money\u2019s on the latter. It just makes sense. Cats and humans are coevolved; the Scratchys and Tigers of the world have had ample time to form opinions about authoritarianism and the police state. And think about it: Have you ever<\/em> seen a cat driving a cruiser? Have you even once<\/em> seen a cat with a badge? These animals want Friskies, not frisking.<\/p>\n

Of course, the media tends to side with the state. \u201cA mad cat upset the general routine of things last Friday morning at a grocery store,\u201d reads a 1939 blurb, failing thereafter to give the cat\u2019s point of view. Time and again, \u201cCats Hate Cops\u201d describes a world in which the humane treatment of animals is not a going concern, and in which the police are generally assumed to be competent executors of the public will. The prose is often blunt: \u201cAfter clubbing the animal into insensibility they shot it through the head,\u201d one story ends.<\/p>\n

The zine is available from Brown Recluse Zine Distro<\/a>; below are two of my favorite entries. <\/p>\n

\"IMG_0724\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"IMG_0723\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cCats Hate Cops\u201d is a tidy black-and-white pamphlet from Research & Destroy, a \u201cradical zine collective\u201d based in New York. Its title may seem, to the casual observer, like an editorial statement, but make no mistake: it\u2019s a fact. The zine\u2019s sixty-two pages comprise 150 years of cat-on-cop violence, all of it diligently chronicled by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2384],"tags":[8017,14844,14847,14845,14846,14787,1384],"class_list":["post-74891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-look","tag-cats","tag-cats-hate-cops","tag-felines","tag-old-newspapers","tag-policemen","tag-violence","tag-zines"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTo Serve and Protect<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Dan Piepenbring on the zine \u201cCats Hate Cops,\u201d filled with 150 years of cat-on-cop violence.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/08\/04\/to-serve-and-protect\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"To Serve and Protect by Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"August 4, 2014 \u2013 \u201cCats Hate Cops\u201d is a tidy black-and-white pamphlet from Research & Destroy, a \u201cradical zine collective\u201d based in New York. 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