FSE

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When they first decided that all of the human students should take a compulsory course in Feline Religious Studies, it didn't really seem like much of a big deal to us. This was the famously liberal university and we were taking liberal arts, and it wasn't like you needed to believe in a religion to study it. Get to know the other guys culture and religion in order to better understand them, forge bonds of cross-cultural whatever and so forth.

It didn't even trouble me, since I'm a total atheist. I find the history of all sorts of belief systems to be just as interesting as one another, from economics to the most wildly held conspiracy theories. None of them are really true, of course, but people believe them and they deeply influence society, so why shouldn't I take an interest?

A minor scratch in these initially noble ideals came up when it turned out that the course was in part a practical one, with just short of thirty percent allocated for attending actual Feline religious services, simply for showing up and observing. In other words, going to church in a sort of non-denominational capacity. It was intended somewhat condescendingly as a generous sop to those human students attending, since it was a compulsory low-level course they were being forced to take. It was intended to let them pass easily without too much pressure.

Of course, forcing someone to attend a service they don't believe in can be taken both ways, and so there were mutters. But our theory professor, a solid Feline guy and serious intellectual with a deep grounding in the actual history and philosophy, suggested that we treat it like anthropology if we had any concerns. Go and observe, but remain distant from the practices themselves.

This was a little harder to say than do, really, because the Feline take on religion is a little wilder and a lot more enthusiastic than any mere human belief system. This faith likes to get interactive, with lots of singing, dancing, excited chanting and other activities, much as you'd expect for a way of life founded by an energetic species of hunters. There's also some minor indulgence in weakly mood-altering substances, which sounds much worse than it is given most of them don't work on humans and only have a very mild effect on Felines. It's nothing worse than the ceremonial wines or incense of the sort preferred by many other belief systems.

As you're probably aware, Feline services take place near sunset, rather than at the egregiously early morning hours favored by more masochistic religions on holy days, and so arrangements to accommodate us had been made once a week at the school chapel, late in the day after all other classes were over. The chapel was not specifically denominational, more of a general faith-based facility provided by the university to meet the many and variant religious needs of its students, so it had a generically religious appearance consisting of an altar times one, sans iconography, down the far end to catch the light, and multiple rows of chairs and benches at the front near the doors, which like the whole front side of the building were glass, to let out that same light when needed and attract passers-by with hope and spiritual inspiration.

There was a sort of closed and roofed over space in front of the chapel, which gave it a significant resemblance to all of the other lecture theaters throughout the campus. Someplace for students to wait for class while it was cold. In fact it had probably been built by the same carpenters who did the rest of the place, only with more windows and consideration given to effect.

It was tacitly considered that it was acceptable to put up anything that might not openly offend someones religion, so there was lots of general literature tacked up around the inside walls of the chapel, generally with plain covers, and enthusiastic but clumsy kids drawings with lots of careful symbols and poorly drawn figures, ranking in importance based on their size. It got me thinking about the early history of religious art.

I'd never actually been to the chapel before, so I wandered in and took a seat at the back on the left, which is where I always sit in a lecture hall if I can manage it. In fact, as more and more of the students draggled in, human and Feline non-withstanding, it felt more and more like just getting ready for another lecture. I resisted a temptation to pull out a notepad and a pen.

Everything was proceeding as normal, in fact, until an elderly Feline dressed in a sacerdotal robe wandered in and got into a sort of covert conversation with the far more casually dressed Feline whom I assumed was the younger or possibly assistant priest who would actually be supervising today's worship and other ritual activities. I hadn't fully boned up on the specialist terms for each of the individual priestly ranks within the feline faith, but they adhered to the common practice of one older male (usually hidebound and set in his ways) training a new younger male fresh in the faith and full of good intentions (to do the heavy lifting and mix it up a bit). The senior males robe was impressive, light but deeply black with gold sun symbols and silver lunar ones embroidered crisply onto the sleeves and shoulders.

The conversation, such as it was, started out with the senior one grasping the juniors shoulder in an overly familiar manner, like an impropriety he was entitled to by sheer virtue of knowing better, and whispering at him fiercely. The discussion started off civil, but rapidly got louder and more intense, finally becoming generally audible to those of us attending the service as something roughly like-

“...it's an essential part of our faith! Our pride in our glorious feral heritage! How can you possibly think it's alright to just invite a bunch of humans in to share our sacred worship? What could they possibly know about strength, about pride? They don't even have fur!"

As the final words burst forth in a full-out snarl, he abruptly let go of the younger males shocked shoulders and began pointing aggressively as the audience, jabbing spitefully with one long and twisted claw on a poorly manicured and gnarled paw. I knew he wasn't really aiming at anyone specifically, but when his final swat at the air left him pointing straight in my direction, it was like he was deliberately pointing right at me. It totally ruined my composure and, frankly, it left me a little disturbed by the whole affair.

I tactfully refrained from pointing out the hypocrisy of going on about feral strength and pride in a university full of students sitting reading books, studying intently, focused at all hours on every kind of known e-device in existence and subsisting solely on cafeteria food. I very much doubt any of them had ever actually gone hunting, let alone cornered prey with their only own strength and their own ten claws alone.

As soon as he had stormed out, I left my seat as discreetly as possible and simply left, walking out the door and onto the campus grounds. It was getting dark, well, let's not kid ourselves, it already was dark by then, but all the lamp-posts had started going, casting their golden warm light out over the university, and the grounds were still practically bustling with students walking back and forth, hanging out, eating food companionably after the last lecture of the day, chatting. Under one of the lamp-posts, a gorgeous female Feline and her human boyfriend were snuggled up close and were clearly working their way up to getting romantic later on.

I couldn't bring myself to go back, even though the Feline take on services is legendary for being practical and yet enormous amounts of fun. I was surprised that such a harmless faith could hold such an undercurrent of conservatism. Eventually, I just went home.

The following week, on the same day, I was feeling a lot better about it. That every religion has its few occasional zealots is something we'd all be forced to admit, so I was willing to let it go and be open minded. I was sure that further words had probably been exchanged after the previous little incident and some sort of rough detente sketched out, if only to avoid making the Feline faith look fundamentally bad in front of all the weak furless humans.

This time I arrived a little early, to scope things out. The Feline religion doesn't attract only adults but also children, just like any other belief system, and the university chapel was no exception. It must have been some sort of significant day in their ecclesiastical calendar, because lots of Felines of all ages had shown up and were waiting inside the covered hallway for the doors to open once the previous service was finished, so they could go in. Lots of them were clutching various books or bits of paper associated with their faith, so I took the opportunity to do a little Feline-watching and see what they'd all bought along.

I'd learned more about their faith during the theory classes that made up the rest of the course in the intervening week, so I was able to recognize some of the paraphernalia. A female Feline, about teenage or thereabouts, was carrying what looked like a small record or disk wrapped in a thick white paper cover, lovingly worn and yellowed around the corners, with the manufacturers name 'Eland Music' (or possibly Anand Music) written at the top in highly stylized letters made to look like cats-claws, which is why it was so hard to make it out exactly. Cleaner text at the bottom gave the title 'Bad Animal Song' which I was more familiar with as it had been briefly mentioned as an example.

One of the customs of the Feline religion was to try and deal with problems by concrete actions, or at least this was the original intention, according to our theory professor. The idea being, don't just sit there being depressed at how much you've failed or how bad a person you are, instead go out and do something to try and make yourself feel better or fix things. However, the original idea had faded somewhat by modern times, replaced by a more ritualistic idea of the alleviation of sin or wrongdoing by some sort of symbolic action designed to atone for that guilt or misdeed.

Combine that with a slightly evangelical religion that likes to dance and sing and prides itself on practical measures, and you have the Bad Animal Song, a ritualistic apology in the form of a dance number. By performing the Bad Animal Song as skillfully and perfectly as possible in front of your fellows, as a ceremonial self-abasement designed to humiliate you before your peers, you are thus forgiven for your misdeeds and welcomed back into the fold.

It saddened me that such a pretty young Feline was expected to do this, because I couldn't really see anything significantly wrong with her that would necessitate doing the Bad Animal Song on a major holy day. I expect she just thought of it as a perfectly normal part of her religion and didn't mind. Possibly she was even proud to be given such a significant chance to atone for some purely imagined fault, whether in her own mind or that of another, and would perform the song with just as much skill as she could and an honest desire for forgiveness.

Next to her, a younger male Feline child was putting the finishing touches to a very poorly photo-copied document, a last few empty underlined spaces being carefully and clumsily filled in with a worn pencil in a jabbing motion that reminded me all too much of the senior priest. So far he'd managed to avoid puncturing the paper, but that was probably more by luck than skill.

The main picture that took up the page was a clumsily outlined feline, deliberately made to look foolish and awkward by rings around its black and white eyes, and a slightly stumbling pose. The text at the bottom of the page read, “I have been a bad Feline this year because...." and continued in this vein for several paragraphs, apparently a moral exercise designed to draw out admission of ones flaws and get the person filling it in to face up to them.

It was still kind of cute, despite the contents, but then it was designed for a cub. There were the exact sort of colorful scribblings outside the lines on the picture that you'd expect.

After watching the crowd for a short while, I looked down at my claws and huffed discontentedly.

There was really no getting round it, I couldn't in good conscience attend the practical part of this course. While all of this might seem perfectly normal and harmless to your average Feline raised in the faith, it just raised my hackles and I couldn't make myself comfortable with it.

So, from now on I'm just going to skip the 'practical' classes for this one. I can still pass, all I have to do is hit the books and get a really solid score on the remaining seventy percent of the course.

It's just the history of another weird belief system. I can do that.

They say never to talk about religion or politics, so when I woke from peculiar dream in which I had somehow become enrolled in Feline Studies and it ended pretty much how you'd expect, I felt compelled to share. For Feline, substitute the preferred cat-like fictional species of your choice (Khaijit, Charr, etc.) all of which are always portrayed as proud, touchy, slightly feral and obsessed with their specific cultural heritage. My subconscious must have been mulling over this particular stereotype when I fell asleep.

Just in case anyone gets the wrong idea, no, this is not intended as any sort of reference to any real world religion or belief system. You are all totally wrong and none of it is true, but I deeply respect your right to delude yourself as you see fit.