Filmmaker Asako Ushio’s documeowntary Cat People is about cats and the Humans who care fur them. I sat down with the filmmaker’s cat, Jesse, to discuss the mewvie. 

KATNISS: A film about cats… hmm, were you the inspurration and mews fur this?

JESSE: In purrt, yes. 

KATNISS: Your Humom starts the film pawndering whether or not to have a Human child. What are your felines about this? 

JESSE: I suppurrt her in whatever she chooses to do – or not do – as long as I am still her baby.

KATNISS: Oh, you would be. She describes you and your furbrother as “the love of my life and part of my soul.” I have no doubt that her love fur you would not diminish. Human children and furbabies can coexist quite nicely.

JESSE: Well, you saw those young Luxe Paws trappers in the film – Kathy Smith and Melody Curtis – they’re kids, but they’re cat people, too.

KATNISS: I actually met Kathy at a feline fundraiser years ago and was very impurressed with her.

A trapper (l) with Luxe Paws founder Jacquie Navratil

JESSE: All the Luxe Paws trappers – and rescue people in general – are pawsome. I’d still be living in an auto shop in Koreatown and eating out of dumpsters is not fur the kindness of Humans.

KATNISS: This film highlights the impurrtance of trap-neuter-release and how to get the community involved in helping street cats. They even feature a pregnant cat and discuss Planned Purrenthood options through Fix Nation.

Me interviewing Kate Benjamin

JESSE: Humans who help cats are the best. Like Catifcation Queen, Kate Benjamin.

KATNISS: Yes! I think she might secretly be a cat because she thinks like us. She knows we like to survey our territory furrom up high and that we love step shelves and wall purrches.

KATNISS: Then there’s the purrt of the mewvie that takes us to Tashiro-Jima, also known as Cat Island, where cats live “not as strays but not as pets, either.”

JESSE: Furrtographer Yoshinao Tanaka purrfectly captures the lives of the felines who live on the island where the cats are always eager to lend a paw to the local fishermen. 

KATNISS: A very diffurent life than that of a housecat, fur sure. I appurrciate seeing how others live in diffurent parts of the world.

JESSE: So you liked the mewvie?

KATNISS: Yes, it’s very thought purrvoking. If I were a polydactyl cat, I’d give it a thumbs up. But since I’m not, I’d just like to say it’s a film that all cat people should see. I think they would be mewved by it.

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Cat People is streaming now on Amazon Plus.