Cat Person by Kristen Roupenian (b. 1982)
"Cat Person" is a short story by Kristen Roupenian about modern dating. The story was originally published in the New Yorker in 2017 and was later adapted into a film in 2023. The story follows Margot, a twenty-year-old college sophomore who begins seeing Robert, a thirty-four-year-old man. They meet at a movie theatre, where Margot works, and exchange numbers. After that, most of their relationship takes place over text. They tell each other about their days, banter, and flirt. Margot describes their relationship via text saying, “When they landed two or three good jokes in a row there was a kind of exhilaration to it, as if they were dancing” (Roupenian 2). Despite texting daily, Margot still does not know much about Robert’s personal life; only that he has two cats named Mu and Yan. After fall break Margot and Robert arrange a formal date at the theatre. On their date, she notices that Robert is being distant and unkind towards her. As the night goes on, she realizes that Robert is sensitive, and his ego gets bruised easily. She also notices that he is quite self-conscious, making her doubt their relationship. Afraid to stop what she put in motion; Margot ends up sleeping with Robert. “‘This is the worst life decision I have ever made!’ [MOU1] And she marvelled at herself for a while, at the mystery of this person who’d just done this bizarre, inexplicable thing” (Roupenian 10). Ashamed, Margot ends things with Robert. After a month without contact, Margot receives a slew of hateful messages from Robert, calling into question her perception of him as a “nice guy”.
Analysis
Although there are many energy afterlives "Cat Person," I chose to focus on phones, more specifically texting, as they affect Robert and Margot’s relationship throughout the story. Because phones have taken their toll on society and the way we communicate. As mentioned before, a majority of Margot and Robert’s relationship takes place over text, only meeting in person two times within the story. This digital relationship lacks emotional nuance and allows Margot to shape a false, yet gratifying, perception of Robert. For my graph, I recorded every interaction between Robert and Margot. Splitting them into two categories: “In-person interactions” and “Over text interactions. After that, I decided whether the interactions were negative or positive. I deciphered this by analyzing how Margot felt during each interaction. Once I tallied all their interactions in Excel, I turned my data into a Pivot table so that I could better recognize trends in their relationship. Generally, she felt overwhelmingly positive about their relationship when texting [Fig 1] and overwhelmingly negative when Robert and her met in person [Fig 2]. When visualizing my data, I chose a traditional bar graph because it is simple and effective. I made the bars on the graphs cats because it is visually engaging and pertains to the story. Robert claims over text that he has two cats, however, when Margot goes to his house, she never sees them. Robert’s cats are emblematic of their relationship. The cats are a false self that is being projected through online communication; however, this persona is nowhere to be found in real life. Quantifying their interactions made me realize just how few good in-person interactions Margot had with Robert, despite what Margot thinks. As the story proceeds the good moments appear less and less.
Bibliography
Roupenian, Kristen. "Cat Person." The New Yorker, 4 Dec. 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/11/cat-person
