A Diplomatic Introduction
#3 of A World of Cats
Hey there, sirs and madams, pleased to meet you! I assume your stay at the hotel lived up to your expectations? Here, watch your step getting out of the tram - there you go. I'd shake your hand, but, these pesky claws, they're really something else. Retractable, sure, but not always reliable, so why take the chance! Anyway, welcome to our humble planet, and thanks ever so much for agreeing to take part in this cultural-exchange delegation! I'm sure we'll learn much about each other during our time together here in our beautiful capital city.
My name? Well, you see we don't exactly have names per se, as we tend to identify ourselves by scent instead, but I made up a nickname you can call me if you like - Aff, short for affable, which seems like a good word for a cultural attaché, wouldn't you agree? I'm a bit of a student of you as well, after all. Your language, especially, including I hope something close enough to your local vernacular; if not, pardon my slang, and feel free to correct me if my usage is incorrect. Not that I expect it'll be too bad, as I've taken not only one, but multiple college-level courses in Standard English, which I understand is something that most if not all of you speak. If not, feel free to pick up one of those headsets over to your right - yes, those ones - as translators are standing by who can speak everything from swahili to catalan. Now if you'll just follow me, we'll get started.
I know that on the surface, our society does not appear all that different from yours - after all, here we are in this glorious city, and while the buildings on the skyline are perhaps a bit more organically-inspired than those of your legendary New York, most other things are comparable. Of course, walking though this city, you may notice some decidedly marked differences in certain specific types of behavior, so I should probably cover that first of all, to avoid any troublesome misunderstandings.
I hope you'll allow me to be frank, as some of what I'm about to say may be... controversial to your sensibilities, but given that this is a cultural exchange, I'll assume that you're all of the open-minded sort, and will take these differences to heart in the spirit of understanding.
As you can probably tell by my appearance, and the appearance of the many people you may see around you as we walk through the city, our genetic origins are somewhat different. As you were originally derived from various simian species, our ancestry traces forward from a class of animals that, in your classification, would be deemed felines, although in many ways we ended up similarly - humanoid, bipedal, and sentient. Of course, there are some other differences as well - the placement of things such as ears, and our coats of fur, which range from a light yellow to a deep orange-red in the summer, and shed for a thicker greyish-white coat in winter. Plus, there are the claws, and, of course the tails - I would express remorse at the fact that your evolutionary pathway has sadly robbed you of their function, but I must say that you seem to be doing a surprisingly good job of poise and balance without them. Of course, there are some other... intimate differences here and there, but we'll get to that in a bit.
One of the other things that differs, of course, is how our sexuality evolved through our evolution. If you are at all familiar with the felines on your world, we evolved with a system of mating not entirely unlike theirs - one that involves estrus and induced ovulation rather than the automatic form, termed menstruation, I believe, that your own biology dictates. While this difference may not seem immediately obvious, believe it or not, a huge amount of our societal adaptations have come about as a result of this difference in the reproductive process.
You have to understand, mating is much, much different in our society, largely because our biological imperatives loom much larger. For you, as I understand, mating is usually a clearly conscious choice, informed somewhat by instincts and hormones, but a clear-cut choice nevertheless. For us, well... there is estrus.
How should I put it? Well, perhaps I can explain it by talking about rape. Yes, I know, an odd starting point, but what you need to understand is that in our culture, there are no statutes against rape because the point is moot - for all intents and purposes, rape is impossible. Females, as far as mating goes, have just two states - in heat, or otherwise. If a female is in heat, force is unnecessary, and consent is guaranteed, since as long as you are a male of breeding age and make any bodily contact whatsoever, the chances of you being able to refrain from mating, or of the female allowing you to leave without mating, are virtually nonexistent. On the other hand, if a female is not in heat, there is nothing that will persuade her to allow mating to occur, and as our females generally have muscular parity with males, in addition to razor-sharp claws... well, you'll very rarely encounter even an attempted rapist, clearly marked by the torn, ragged mass of scar tissue between their legs where their genitalia used to be.
As you can see, estrus is a powerful biological imperative, and while it is active sexual encounters can come on without warning, the result being that any area of the city can become an impromptu mating zone. So, you should be forewarned, should you happen to see any groups gathered to mate in the alleys between buildings, public parks, and so on, just leave them be - yes, like that one over there, ma'am, although you shouldn't stare unless you plan to become involved - while such a display might seem a bit alien to you, it is something that rarely attracts notice here, unless you are seeking to be one of the participants. While you are indeed here on a mission of cultural exchange, given that some of our mating rituals involve some scratching with claws, I would not encourage you to participate in this exchange on a physical level.
Of course, as you can probably imagine, this method of mating does pose several societal challenges that must be considered in a modern society. For one thing, unlike the way it is intertwined in your culture, there is a clear separation between companionship and sexual activity - while members of our society often form two-to-five-person bonds somewhat equivalent to your marriage and choose to live their overall lives together, the nature of our mating ensures that during the course of their lives, most individuals will mate with a large cross-section of the population. Obviously, this creates issues that can often contradict with a modern, commodity- and ownership-based society, wealth accumulation, paternity, and so on. Given that there was no particularly easy solution, as a female can mate with dozens of different individuals during one estrus cycle, it was decided many centuries ago that familial lineage would never be feasibly relevant - instead, all offspring would be cared for equally by the entire community. As such, everyone is raised from an early age not in individual households, but in communal homes somewhat akin to your concept of boarding schools. All of the adults take turns to serve as parents and teachers to the children in their neighborhood unit, and all of them pay a fixed rate of taxes that are used to provide for the children's needs until they are of mating age themselves, and then to pay for their collegiate or vocational training to turn them into functional members of our society.
You might be wondering, though, about another problem similar to the one facing your own world: that of overpopulation. It is, in fact, an issue that became important even more rapidly for us, as our women have the potential to produce one to two litters per year, with quarterly periods of heat and a roughly five-month gestation period. As each litter is capable of producing anywhere from four to fourteen young, the population can add up quickly. As a result, as our society modernized and our population was poised to quite literally explode, we turned quickly to chemistry as a way to control population size, primarily through the creation of contraception that most women were required to take. This, however, created other issues, as it convinced women's bodies that they were pregnant and caused them to forgo estrus entirely. The problem is, males are effectively in heat all the time, and unlike females with very specific reproductive hormones, theirs are more inextricably intertwined with other functions - while the female contraceptive only had minor side effects, attempting to block male arousal caused severe endocrine-system complications that quickly became life-threatening. As a result of the uneven suppression, the sudden drop in receptive women caused no end of frustration, leading to fights among men with no other outlets, and the few females that were receptive being so overwhelmed with male attention that their health was placed at risk. As a result, the initial contraceptive plan was quickly abandoned, leading back to the original problem.
Finally, another method was developed, one that did not affect hormones or the process of estrus at all, but instead blocked a specific neurotransmitter that was responsible for delivering certain specific signals to the ovaries, thus preventing the stimulation from inducing ovulation, but not affecting estrus or the female sexual response. As a result, the periods of receptivity occurred as normal, but those taking the contraception simply would not become pregnant. That being said, as pregnancy does end the heat cycle several days early, women using the contraceptive instead stay in heat for the full ten-day period, leading to a measurable decline in overall societal productivity. However, despite its drawbacks and the the debatable inconveniences to the focus of both sexes, the new contraceptive was considered to be highly preferable to the other alternatives. In our current society, women are automatically distributed pills, and placebos are rotated in at regular intervals to keep our society close to the replacement rate and ensure that we have sufficient resources to provide for our populations. As a result, women experience one heat cycle approximately every four to five years where reproduction becomes possible, which, along with the communal approach to raising children, means that both males and females can have productive work lives alongside our instinctual reproductive drives.
Oh, I should also probably mention to the women in your group, there are a few things you may want to be aware of, just in case - I doubt it will be a problem, but just to make sure there are no incidents, some knowledge might be useful. You may notice that some women in our society are dressed fairly scantily below the waist, often in items resembling underwear, swimwear, fur-tight shorts, or the like. This can be for a variety of reasons, but it is usually related to them being in estrus, both to allow for the more effective distribution of pheromones, and to provide easy access for mating. I would not encourage you to emulate this style of dress, just to make sure that no members of our society are confused as to your mating status. Also, if you must stretch your muscles, I would suggest doing so in a free-standing manner, and to avoid stretching out against a wall or in such a way that presents your posterior. Again, this most likely won't be a problem, as I can't imagine you would put out a scent that would be intriguing to anyone else here, but given how our mating works, it's probably better to be just a bit on the safe side.
Anyway, as you can see here, we're now approaching the main plaza in front of the lovely building that houses our main seat of government, which also doubles as an open-air marketplace for a wide variety of fine local cuisine. Oh, no, ma'am, you probably don't want to go into that tent right there, as that's actually a tent set aside for mating, not a restaurant. Yes, yes, stay with the group for now, if you please. We do realize that your nutritional requirements are just a bit different from ours, so if you'll step right this way, we have a buffet set up for you down at the edge of the plaza, featuring a few of our local delicacies that we believe will meet your nutrition and taste requirements. We also have a selection of dishes prepared by chefs that were part of a previous cultural exchange program, and who are now at least partially trained in some of your world's fine regional cuisines. Once you've completed your lunch, one of my colleagues will arrive to guide you on a tour of our capital's extensive historical museum, where you'll find out some of the fascinating events that took us from our early tribal societies to to our modern-day civilization, and then I'll rejoin you for a dinner in your honor in the government ballroom itself. Along with a number of dignitaries from our country's various municipalities, there will be a keynote presentation on the new economic compact between our worlds that should be introduced during the next legislating session. I hope you've enjoyed our program for this morning, and I look forward to further progress in the warm relations between our societies.