Freedom and Blame

The Cat Who Peed on My Wife

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Picture this: it’s 10:37 p.m. last Thursday. My wife and I are asleep in our brand-new bed when suddenly she bolts upright with a shriek. I sit up too, confused — was it a nightmare? An earthquake? A burglar?

No.

It was urine. Warm, fresh, feline urine. Right on her legs. Right through the blankets. Right onto our brand-new, expensive latex mattress.

This is not a metaphor. This is our cat.

She’s a ten-year-old Ragdoll, known for her aloof dignity, modest affection and occasional urinary tract infections. But this time, it wasn’t a timid little 'spotting' incident — this was a full-system flush. And right on top of my sleeping wife.

What followed was a flurry of anger, disbelief, laundry and declarations like, 'She KNEW what she was doing!' and 'Why would she do it RIGHT THERE?'

And that, dear reader, is when it hit me: we were morally judging our cat.

Enter Philosophy

A few days later, I stumbled across an academic paper with a wonderfully ironic title: Stubborn Moralism and Freedom of the Will.^[1] The premise? That when people witness bad outcomes, they tend to blame first and ask questions about free will later.

In other words: we don’t care whether someone could’ve done otherwise — we just want to know why they did that.

The authors tested this by asking people to judge hypothetical agents (including robots!) who had no choice but to cause harm. And even when those agents were clearly pre-programmed or neurologically hardwired, people still blamed them. Because the outcome was bad, and someone needed to be held responsible.

Sound familiar?

The Cat as Moral Agent

Let’s review the evidence:

• Was the cat’s preferred toilet (a well-stocked bathroom with 3 litterboxes) temporarily occupied? ✔️
• Was she previously scolded for urinating on beds during illness? ✔️
• Were there other places she could have gone? ✔️
• Did she choose the one spot least acceptable to the humans in the house? ✔️

From our perspective, she wasn’t acting out of desperation, instinct or confusion. No, we were convinced she was acting out of spite. As if she had mulled her options and said, 'You know what? I think I’ll urinate right here on Mummy.'

Blame first. Feline agency second.

But Did She Choose?

Biologically? Probably not. The cat was likely stressed, confused, and trapped in a loop of territorial panic. Her 'choice' was no more deliberate than a sneeze. But that didn’t stop us from attributing motive, assigning guilt and banishing her from the bedroom.

Why?

Because moral judgment is sticky. It’s not just about fairness — it’s about drawing a line. 'That was wrong'. 'That crosses a boundary'. 'That mattress was $1,200'.

The Real Takeaway

If we’re willing to project moral responsibility onto a housecat, imagine how easily we do it to fellow humans. Or AI. Or anyone whose actions upset our expectations of what 'should' happen.

We say we believe in freedom of the will. But in practice, we often act as if responsibility is retrofitted to match our outrage.

And while cats may lack the cognitive bandwidth for guilt, humans don’t. We stew in it. Or we weaponize it. And sometimes, that’s more about us than it is about them.

Epilogue

The bedroom door is now permanently shut to all cats. Plastic covers are back. And the cat in question? She remains gloriously unrepentant.

Which is to say, she’s free.