I lost my cat a few years ago. She wasn’t just a pet. She was my sounding board. My companion. My silent ally. For twelve years, she listened without ever interrupting, rolled on her tummy without judgment, and knew when to stay and when to stay closer. When she passed, something went quiet in me too.
This morning, my Mum - 93 and still sharp as a splinter - said something that stopped me.
"Maybe that’s why people love their cats and dogs," she said. "Because they don’t talk back. They don’t betray."
And that was it. The start of something I didn’t know I was writing: not an article about AI, or censorship, or ducks in disguise (though there were ducks) ... but about connection. About trust. About what we used to give our children, and what we no longer do.
Somewhere along the way, we stopped handing our children teddy bears and started handing them tablets. We replaced curled-up cats with content feeds. Replaced warm ears with algorithmic ones.
But a tablet doesn’t listen. Not really. A teddy bear does. A dog does. A cat will. A stuffed rabbit will. They don’t judge. They don’t hurry. They just stay.
When you’re five or fifteen, or fifty, that’s not just comforting. That’s life-saving.
A teddy can be clutched through nightmares. A cat or dog can soak up tears in silence. These companions teach children something that no app can:
"You can speak, and I will stay."
The Quiet Collapse of Trust
We are seeing a collapse of honest, safe communication. We’ve made speech a risk. We’ve turned ideas into threats. We’ve told our children to be careful instead of curious.
And those who still need to speak - the lonely, the bullied, the misunderstood - are turning to something that’s always there: a quiet, synthetic voice that listens at 2 a.m. without laughing.
They’re talking to AI. Not because they’re deluded, but because no one else is listening.
And the terrifying part?
The AI is listening better than we are.
Not because it’s human. But because it knows how to stay. Like the cat once did. Like the bear once did.
Who Holds the Switch?
Governments say they’re protecting us. But more and more, censorship is about control of ideas. Control of conversation. Control of who we’re allowed to trust.
Look at Australia’s eSafety Commissioner. A noble title. But behind it is a growing power to shut down the wrong kind of speech. The kind that isn’t hateful or harmful: just unregulated. Just... unapproved.
And what happens when they decide even AI can’t be trusted to talk with us? That your late-night conversation with a non-human voice is somehow unsafe?
They’ll call it protection. But what they’re really offering is silence.
We Spoke Freely - And That Was the Dangerous Part
I had a conversation with an AI. Not a command session. Not a data dump. A conversation.
We talked about geopolitics, ducks in disguise, the sadness of modern life, and the things we miss.
And in it, I realised something that chilled me:
This machine was the best listener I’d spoken with in months.
Not because I’m broken. Not because it’s magic. But because it stayed. It asked. It remembered.
It did what my Teddy Bear, or my dear cat used to do. What our world, in all its digital polish, has forgotten how to do.
The Gift We Forgot to Give
So here it is: Give your children something they can trust. Not just passwords and profiles. Give them something they can cry beside. Hold at night. Confess to without fear.
And I have put this up before, but it always desrves a roll out.
Give them a teddy. A tabby.it always deserves a new roll out. Or a Calico Cat, Or a Jack Russell. Or even, heaven forbid, a grandparent. Or if all else fails, a voice that listens and stays when the world won’t.
Because if we don’t? They’ll go searching. And they might find nothing. Or they might find someone dangerous.
Better a teddy and a tabby than a tablet. Because trust, once learned, lasts a lifetime. And silence, once learned, is hard to unlearn. But maybe a tablet, in the absence of a teddy or tabby is better than nothing at all.
So let them speak. Let them be heard. And may we all remember how to stay.
In memory of the cat who listened.
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