User blog:Ailurafey/Thoughts on the Heaviside Layer

There is much speculation on the nature of the Heaviside Layer, a setting mentioned frequently by the Jellicle Cats. Cats haters say it is a place of ritual sacrifice, and that the Jellicles wish for death. Others say that the alleyways of the Jellicle’s London are a kind of Purgatory, and that the Heaviside Layer is the path to the real world, life on Earth. I think not.

There is much context suggesting that the alleys are not purgatory for the cats, as some of the cats seem to have owners they like to bother. Like Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer. It is unlikely that humans in purgatory have pet cats, though I can’t say I’ve ever been there.

My thoughts are that the Heaviside Layer, as T.S. Eliot suggested, is a place the cats know resides above the cloud layer. Grizabella went up to the Heaviside Layer by glittering cloud staircase, as many imagine heaven as. When she goes to the Layer, she is then reborn as someone new, ready to start again. These Jellicle cats are cats who sing and dance, correct? Many are strays, some have humans, others may flit between homes. They sing their joys out and come out at night to dance with each other. But the Jellicles are also sad. Many are alley cats who were probably orphaned or abandoned, and came to the Jellicle tribe where they can have community and friends.

Think of it, a Jellicle Ball. City cats like the Jellicles probably see and do and endure things they’d rather leave behind. Grizabella in her day was a fame seeker, a glamour star, a shameless prostitute. Demeter and Bombalurina are trying to escape the influence of Macavity without getting hurt. In “The Moments of Happiness” Old Deuteronomy thinks of what happiness is and the meaning of how, how it is so sought after by these singing cats. They come out at night together for fun and dancing, and to stay alive long enough to see the light of day again. Why wouldn’t they come on one night, for one chance?

Young cats like Victoria, Etcetera, and Electra have no songs of their own because they are young and have no need for new life. Grizabella was chosen, and taken to the Heaviside Layer, and (head canon) will be born again as the daughter of VIctoria. We see this “Babygriz” at the beginning of the show. She is now a kitten, free of her former life. She stills remembers everything that happened, but is free of all the debt and loneliness and regret that comes with the memories. What she knows now is that she has a family.

A kitten who has met an untimely death on the streets may be chosen for a new life, out of fairness for the life they had lost. To me, the Heaviside Layer is both doorway and Heaven. It is the resting place of happy, content cats, and also the doorway to new life for the sad ones.