What is covered, week by week, and which topics each lecture draws on.
Lectures#
Marisol Quaye delivers all twelve lectures, building one continuous argument about what looking after a particular human cat actually requires — from Week 1’s claim that there is no universal cat through to Week 12’s return to that same claim, now earned rather than assumed. Each week’s Care Lab practises the lecture just given, so the two are read together rather than as separate strands.
There Is No Universal Cat
The opening lecture — the human-cat metaphor, personalised care versus a universal script, and why understanding one particular cat is a long-term practice
Week 1 · 22 February 2027
Watch Before You Pet
Observation versus interpretation versus assumption, and why responding before you understand is itself a failure
Week 2 · 1 March 2027
Reading the Tail
How language, repetition, routine and shared history give a signal meaning, without mistaking interpretation for certainty
Week 3 · 8 March 2027
Cats Have History
Moving from isolated interactions to continuity — recurring pattern, one-off event, shared convention and uncertain history
Week 4 · 15 March 2027
Memory Is Care
Why remembering everything is not the same as remembering well — sorting a human cat's history into what to keep, hold lightly, or let expire
Week 5 · 22 March 2027
The Cat Has Changed
A care model can be correct in the past and wrong now — why preferences change, routines disappear, and an old response can fail precisely because it once worked
Week 6 · 29 March 2027
When Signals Disagree
What to do when a human cat's current message, an established preference, and their recent behaviour do not point the same way
Week 7 · 19 April 2027
Care Is Not Obedience
Why personalised care does not mean automatic agreement, and how knowing a human cat well can make disagreement more informed rather than less caring
Week 8 · 26 April 2027
The Bad Response
A failure that can look perfectly supportive from the outside — how "technically supportive" and "right for this human cat" can come apart
Week 9 · 3 May 2027
Repair
What happens after the agent gets the cat wrong — diagnose, acknowledge, repair the response, and update the model so the failure changes something
Week 10 · 10 May 2027
Keeping the Nest
The maintenance lecture — why personalised care needs pruning as well as accumulation, and continuity is an ongoing practice rather than a finished profile
Week 11 · 17 May 2027
Know Your Cat
The closing lecture — returning to "there is no universal cat" and asking what knowing one particular human cat has actually come to mean
Week 12 · 24 May 2027