I love knowing that I live in a world where Best Coast/Bethany Cosentino’s adorable cat Snacks “may be more famous than Cosentino herself,” and where Devo streams their new record live to a group of webcam kitten-critics. It’s a world where plucky, space-faring felines are ready to boldly take us where only partied-out Brit kids with sculpture-garden hair have gone before. I dig it. What can I say? I’m a proud cat dad.

As such, I was really looking forward to Proper Eats, the debut full-length from We Like Cats—an offbeat new power trio consisting of supernaturally endowed jammer Adam “White Rainbow” Forkner, Honey Owens of Valet, and Eva Saelens/Inca Ore. To celebrate this week’s release of Proper Eats, I decided to attempt a half-baked Devo-esque experiment, wherein I hung with my 14-bound tabby homegirl and transcribed her reactions (and my own) to the record, front-to-back. My "findings" are included after the jump.

My cat was, to my surprise, unfazed by the airhorns which open “Money Dubby Money,” although her ears did perk back every time Saelens let out an uncanny yelp or wail. When Saelens first sang the eponymous lyric “we like cats,” she looked upward, as if in hopes of divining the source of the foreign vocalism. Conversely, the “meow” sounds near the song’s halfway mark did little to curry her attention. She also displayed a marked indifference to high-hats, and the presence or absence thereof. Go figure.

By the time “Money Dubby Money” had wrapped, she’d settled into a leisurely pose and was far too chilled to express any alarm at the bold, uptempo bravado instantly palpable on “Meow, Hear Me Roar.” The song’s flurry of delightful analog synth-sploration is pretty winning, and it’s definitely the most caffeinated cut on the record (it manages not to sacrifice any of Proper Eats’ pervasive dubbiness in pursuit of this liveliness).

For the lethargic groove of “New Born Tribe”—which builds into an album highlight from a scanty foundation of muted, blearily blared Casio notes—she relaxed even further, resting her head on her arm in an as-close-as-I’m-going-to-get-to-sleeping-without-sleeping pose (ask your Yogi about it sometime).

“Ruff-a-lution Dub,” true to its name, takes the record’s reggae and dub strains as far as possible without tipping everything towards full-on Jah-praising pastiche. It’s a narrow trail to tread, but Forker, Owens, and Saelens keep things kooky and rough-edged enough to thwart the onset of boredom. Not that you could’ve discerned that by studying my cat’s reaction (or non-reaction, rather)—you wouldn’t even have noticed she was listening if not for the occasional flutters of the ears on her otherwise slumped, stationary head. She straight up lazed through the whole thing. Typical.

When “No Ordinary Dub” came on, she stood up and began cleaning herself (gross) as (I’m guessing) Owens Saelens launched into a (probably ad-libbed) nonsensical screed about special cats and what they eat. This spiel continues for most of the song’s first two minutes, but I didn’t mind; it’s totally my kind of nonsense. Favorite line: “These cats are making three-point shots from the top of the Banana Mountain!” From there, the 12-minute jam veers off into even weirder realms. All kinds of alien sounds and invasive noises creep in from the aural borderlands and threaten to dominate the titular dubscape, including some unmistakable Tone Bank key-tickles.

“Fruits of the Jungle Heart” contains what I’m fairly certain amounts to the album’s most blatant dub sampling, and it’s practically ambient in its chillness—at least when compared against the relative insanity that precedes it. It also contains without a doubt the most ethereally gorgeous singing on the whole album. It was enough to get my cat to stop licking her foot for one moment and just vibe. Although the nip might also have had something to do with that. Here, again, kitty noises seemed to do nothing for her. Ditto for the song’s elephant samples (Proper Eats, as underscored by its winking, on-the-nose song titles, could be said to represent a movement from the club to the zoo).

I bet that if Tukwila’s Rainforest Café were converted into a hipster speakeasy, the management could just loop Proper Eats all day and few would complain. I can’t imagine anywhere where the rec might better serve the ambiance—though based on my cat’s reserved-but-appreciative reaction, maybe Proper Eats would be well-suited for one of Tokyo’s cat cafés, too.

Either way, I’m happy to add it to my collection—though it seems unlikely that Proper Eats would have disappointed me, given what a conflation of my own subjective “likes” it constitutes. If you order the vinyl from the Marriage Records site (as I did), you’ll be treated to a free download with four bonus tracks and a free Rob Walmart mp3, to boot.