This came from a Friday evening casual chat in the OMI group discord, where we were wondering about how to retain members amidst different personalities, while attracting, and more importantly, retaining new members. We spoke about herding cats, and that you don’t herd cats, you throw some tuna where you want them to go – the tuna being the shared vision that people want to be part of.
But this wasn’t the full story, and fuelled by my most recent project iteration (blog forthcoming but this note pad has rough thoughts) and a bit of beer, I thought, it’s not just about tuna. So I shared my cat situation along with how I think this translates to community management. Writing it up sober, I still think it works well. Also adding cat-specific details for posterity.
Introducing the cats
So, let me introduce the cats first. There’s Quinn and Dora (Dora the Explora, from day 1) from the same litter, whose mother is Ally the wildcat. The third kitten, Scottie, along with Lula, Rosa’s biological child but who Ally adopted, left and we never saw them again, we assume they’ve met their demise.
Then there’s Dobble (Diablo but he just became Dobble Bobble) who is Rosa’s last remaining child. Quinn, Dora and Dobble were born here, and Rosa and Ally were feral but became some value of tamed.
a note on those who moved on…
Princess got run over (27 July 2024), and Dobble’s brother Guashie (Guaxinim, Portuguese for raccoon) died from rat poison after a long struggle (25 March 2025). Rest in peace little guys. All of these cats were sterilised and chipped, for the record.
This whole adventure started because when we caught Ally to sterilise her, we realised she was heavily pregnant. The plan was to socialise the kittens and then adopt them out, but of course it was love at first sight and so that was that.
Community engagement using cats as metaphor
In this metaphor, being in the house is equivalent to being an active member in a community. The cats’ affection towards us and the other cats is the equivalent of community contributions. The dynamics between the cats, and between the cats and us, is the equivalent of the community dynamic. The humans in this scenario are the founders, the people with the vision, who need to attract contributions for the health of the project. This already challenges the “democratic” or “equal” idea of this type of community. In my experience, the buck has to stop somewhere, someone has to provide direction.
Where the metaphor breaks is that we really don’t need more cats, obviously, while our community projects do need more members and more contributions. But for this example, let’s assume the hypothetical that we DO want many more cats and that they should give affection/contributions and that the overall dynamic should work well because nobody wants cat fights / flamewars.
Quinn, Dora and Dobble were born here. Using the community metaphor, they are the stable members. But saying that because they contribute well and are “in the flow”, this means that the community works well, is unrealistic. We can’t just breed and indoctrinate members – that’s a cult. And the fact that even though Scottie was born here and chose to go on longer and longer adventures (sans balls – you can’t blame his hormones) means that the setup wasn’t ideal even for the core members. And I am still sad about Lula, she was the prettiest. But being adopted by Ally, she made a clear choice, and we rescued her too late, too, I suppose.
About affection / contributions, Quinn and Dobble give reliable affection throughout the day. Let’s call that the baseline contribution. They’re ideal community members. Dora gives the same amount of overall affection, but she is off exploring most of the day and comes back in the evening and squeezes a day’s worth of affection into 15 minutes. It’s intense. From a community perspective this is still all good: while she only occasionally contributes, she doesn’t cause ructions. Yes, all my pants have holes in from her kneading, but it’s fine.
Rosa … is not my favourite cat. I would say her affection still amounts to the same amount as the baseline affection, but her amplitude wildly oscillates, going both positive and negative. In other words she gives good stuff, but she also causes fights and hissy fits and makes the whole house on edge because you have to know where she is and in what mood she’s in so you can avoid potential conflict. And what makes this so much worse is that she is my partner Graham’s favourite cat, so he keeps making excuses for her, and gives her special treatment, which impedes the discipline and training required to keep her in line, and makes life hell for the rest of us. When Graham is travelling Rosa is much less of a problem, not least because she is around much less. (He strongly disagrees with my cat story because “Rose is not the villain”.)
In a contributor sense, this is the worst kind. It’s not a troll that you can just ban. This member makes contributions, so you want to keep them in the community. This member has political clout with the founders so you can’t really discipline them either. But they damage the rest of the community’s input, and may make good contributors leave. She harasses Quinn, especially Dora (a female thing?), and even her own son, Dobble, to the point that he lost hair due to stress. Most of my worst fights with my partner was about this damn cat. Imagine how that translates to community leadership.
Contributors like this are a real problem, but I don’t think banning them is a solution. The real challenge here is how the leadership manages the community. There needs to be clear guidelines that, more importantly, get enforced. Unfortunately this often devolves into identity politics, and that needs a clearer conversation (which I don’t have yet). Shaping the environment for members to find their flow in their own niche can also help. Rosa has found her spot where she doesn’t bother us and for the most part we don’t bother her.
The key
Then there’s Ally, and I think in this metaphor of growing community, Ally holds the key. Ally was WILD and she is still very distrustful of me on account of catching her, first to confine her to the backroom to have her babies, and then to sterilise her. When she was healed enough and the kittens were more than 8 weeks old, we let her out and she disappeared for months. She was pissed off, all right. Except, we would see signs, food bowl emptied and her characteristic meow in the night, causing the teenage cats to shoot out to go greet her; she would be in to chat to the kittens, and they had a great relationship for another 4 months or so, until she decided they are big enough and to stop bothering her. This made me wonder if the 8 weeks adoption age is a good call, but I guess one needs to draw the line somewhere. We all (except Rosa, obviously) love Ally – even the dogs, who were strays alongside her and her friends.
Ally did a great job as a mom, she struck the right balance with everything. Rosa on the other hand, seem to get confused how to handle the teenage stage, around 6 weeks and older. I think this is why her previous litter didn’t do well – Lula was one of those and I found her emaciated and abandoned, I thought I’ll just bring her inside to die warm and with a full belly, but she pulled through, not least because Ally promptly adopted her, even if at this point she must have been a few months old already. Great, except that maybe Lula could have been tamed if Ally wasn’t around. But having Ally was certainly better for Lula overall. I guess that can translate in this metaphor to the wider reach of the community. Our “community project” couldn’t reach Lula, but creating space for Ally to achieve flow, can help Lula.
Ally is around now, when she wants some kibble, or it’s really cold, and she’s been lounging on the sofa upstairs out of the way occasionally. But the environment has to be right, otherwise she’s out the window. She wants to contribute, but she’s flighty. I think that can be said about a lot of potential (people) contributors. If people are on the outside looking in, what do they see? Do they see happy content cats/contributors who have enough food/rewards and a warm place/sense of belonging, or do they see the hissy fit in action? Even if hissy fits happen only occasionally, that can be enough to create a reputation, or a hostile enough environment to prevent newcomers giving us a try. People don’t have time for that. Nice food and a sofa is not enough to motivate cats to deal with hissy fits.
The bottom line, about cats and communities.
If we want healthy contributor communities, we need to create spaces that allow flighty, occasional contributors to achieve flow. We need to keep the Rosas out of the way in their own little niche, allow them to also achieve flow – they are also valued, after all, and make it clear, and enforced, what the consequences are for causing ructions.
more pics….
