MeowChat: It's not just for crazy cat ladies

In a sea of the über-hip at Austin's South by Southwest Festival last week, I was talking to SXSW panelist and blogger Liz Henry and mentioned MeowChatters, people who role-play online as their cats.

So did she laugh scornfully and make fun of the crazy cat ladies? She did not. She nodded, her eyes lighting up, and encouraged me to add information about the phenomenon to her wiki on fictional blogging.

Her curiosity made me think back to its beginnings. I first became aware of the existence of MeowChat in the mid-90s, when I was running the Pet Care Forum on America Online, but the exact moment a cat first learned to use a computer is not known.

I'm kidding, of course.

MeowChatters are people who create online identities in the names of their cats, and interact on Internet forums and e-mail lists and in chat rooms. The humans behind the cats are a surprising mix, mostly women and a few men. They include college students and retired grandparents, high-tech workers and humane society directors and even a doctor or two -- and, of course, more than a few crazy cat ladies.

As part of an ongoing and often ephemeral creative collaboration, elaborate virtual worlds are created, such as CatHobbyist.com's MeowChat Village, where cats meet, marry, have careers, adopt kittens and tease and comfort their human companions. There are also MeowChat virtual towns, stores, political campaigns, armies, universities and television networks that find more permanent form in mailing list archives and message boards.

Part of the MeowChat world is MeowChat itself -- the language used by the cats. While there are cats who converse in conventional English, most of them use a language comprised of equal parts phonetic spelling, puns and baby talk. A classic example is the story of the first Thanksgiving, as told by the MeowChat Village Hisstorian:

"we know dat da pillbugs camed here frum da old comfy, but we not know why and how, aftpurr dey landed at plywood rock, did dey get to meowchatvillage?"

The answer to that question involves a long sea voyage to escape a major flea infestation and eventual settlement in a magical land known as MeowChat Village, where all the animals live in peace. Or, actually, "peas."

Many cat owners object to having the cats use anything other than perfect English, reasoning that felines are highly refined, intelligent creatures. According to Kathy Gittel's MeowChat FAQ (ostensibly written by the cats themselves):

"We are highly intelligent. Some of us have difficulty spelling because our paws don't fit the human keyboard or because we telepathically send our posts to our humans, who type them for us, and something gets lost in the translation."

MeowChat's distinctive approach to spelling and syntax has been the source of much feuding between those who love and those who deplore the practice. People who join online discussions simply to discuss pet behavior or pet health issues are often annoyed at being addressed in the MeowChat language. As a consequence, many communities have developed conventions such as requiring that posts be tagged "Meow," or some have banned MeowChat altogether.

And then there is the most precious resource of the entire MeowChat community, the GLOW Bank, where good wishes, prayers, positive thoughts and hopes are banked for those who might need them. MeowChatters routinely make deposits and withdrawals from the GLOW Bank, for the benefit of cats, humans and even the occasional "sub-feline life form" such as a dog.

(I really shouldn't have used the word "dog," because any self-respecting MeowChatter would probably die before letting such a word escape the keyboard. The proper term for a canine is "d*g," or, if you prefer not to mask your vulgarities, "goggie.")

MeowChat cats do let GLOW out of the bank on behalf of special d*gs, however. My own d*g Bran, whose story I told in my last column, was the recipient of hundreds of GLOW e-mails and message board posts from AOL and CatHobbyist.com MeowChatters during the time he was ill.

Another MeowChatter with GLOW experience is Portia Neff. If you spend any time in MeowChat Village, you'll probably meet Portia, or rather her online alter ego, her Maine Coon cat, Ash. Portia began MeowChatting as Ash (and sometimes one of her other cats, Zade or Antares) several years ago, and has formed close friendships and an extensive support system with her fellow MeowChatters -- a support system that proved invaluable when Portia was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis three years ago.

"I hadn't been feeling well, and I didn't know what was wrong with me," Portia said in a phone interview. "I was getting, 'Oh, we'll be GLOWing for you' from the other MeowChatters, and it was nice. But when I came back with my diagnosis of MS, the outpouring of support was unreal. I have no idea how many GLOW posts were made to me, and I got instant messages, e-mails every day: 'How are you feeling? What have you found out? What can we do?' Everybody was there. I'd pop onto a chat and I'd say, 'I don't want to bore you guys,' and they'd go, 'No, no, we want to know.'"

After struggling with the fatigue and complications of her illness, Portia made the decision to participate in her first National Multiple Sclerosis Society Walk two years ago. The MeowChat community came through for her, accounting for at least half of her pledges that year and every subsequent year.

Portia's experience belies the stereotype of Internet users as isolated social misfits and illustrates one of the reasons online interactive groups are called "communities." But the fact that so many of these groups are centered on online friendships isn't coincidental. Being able to meet people through words, ideas and a collaborative creative process, instead of in person, makes it possible for those with physical limitations or anxiety disorders to experience social contact without stress.

"We have a number of people wrestling with different physical issues," Portia said. "I think that this is another thing that makes the Internet in general, and MeowChat in particular, especially valuable. You don't have any preconceived physical, in-your-face things to see. I know one of our gals has a lot of physical problems, and I imagine she meets up with a lot of stares and so on, but when she comes to MeowChat, she's the same as everyone else. There's acceptance."

But Portia believes MeowChat serves a purpose beyond support and socializing. "Cats can express our fears. There are things you can laugh about as a cat, but we're afraid or reluctant to verbalize as ourselves. It's a form of therapy for the humans -- the power of adopting an alter ego to express yourself. Kids in therapy have play therapy. That's what we're doing."

Portia has noticed that her interaction with the group, as well as her writing style, is very different depending on which of her cats she is using as her alter ego at the time. "If I'm feeling bitchy, it's delightful to go into MeowChat as Zade. I can put on my Bengal personality and be hissy and pick a fight. But absolutely, that alternate ego, that role-playing, is an escape. It's half the fun of it. That alter ego becomes very strong."

Portia sees the MeowChat language as a crucial part of the collaborative process used in MeowChat. "I love all the double meanings of words and the word play and the puns. It's so funny sometimes. Most of the time, we know everyone who's in [the chat room], and we will kind of unconsciously fade in and out of MeowChat in our conversation as it goes along, and no one thinks twice of it. It flows in and out as if it was your own private language."

She likens participating in MeowChat to the childhood storytelling game where one person comes up with the first line and each person in turn adds another line until you have a story. "It's like whispering a story in someone's ear," she said. "It goes all the way around the room. That's the fun of creativity. What one person can't think of, the next person can."

Portia laughed and said: "In the MeowChat room (on CatHobbyist.com), we have a pond and a Ferris wheel. We flooded the room and went ice-skating. We didn't mean to flood the room, but what happened is we wanted to roast marshmallows and inadvertently set the floor on fire. So Ash quickly changed into his fireman's costume and turned on the sprinklers. And you know cats don't like water, so we opened the windows and let the water freeze and went ice-skating."
Of course they did.

My own forays into MeowChat have been brief and usually prompted by a special event, such as one of the famous MeowChat weddings, or to express my gratitude for the GLOW sent to Bran when he was sick. My cat MissDaphne kindly shared her recipe for Mouse Rolls with the CatHobbyist.com MeowChatters and telepathically gave me permission from beyond the grave to share it with my readers here today:

MissDaphne's Mouse Rolls

Take one mouse.
Roll it around.
Eat it.
Yum.

Close friendships and clever stories aside, is there something special about the MeowChat world? After all, it's not uncommon for intimate relationships to arise among people who interact online, and many communities are based on elaborate role-playing models. There are, in fact, online role-players who have participated in world building on a scale undreamed of by the MeowChatters. "So," you might ask, "what makes MeowChat so different?"

Nothing, and that's the point. Some people might consider MeowChatters a bunch of crazy cat ladies who wouldn't know a blog from a hard drive, but MeowChatters can just as accurately be described as collaborative world builders and role-players.

Not, as Ash would hasten to assure you, that there's anything wrong with crazy cat ladies. Meow.

Christie Keith is a contributing editor for Universal Press Syndicate's Pet Connection and past director of the Pet Care Forum on America Online. She lives in San Francisco.