When the Cat's Away opens with a shot of a construction crane overhanging the rooftops of Paris. This is Paris in the full midst of change.
Neighborhoods are in flux, physically and culturally.
We see a multicultural Paris that may be frightening to tradition-bound Parisians. Immigrants, most of them Arab, are perhaps not much more welcome than the Russians trampling through the Paris apartment in Window . But the integration, however difficult, is perceived as a fait accompli in When the Cat's Away . French society is a different world now, and this film invites the frightened Parisians locked in their apartments to come outside and experience it for all that it is worth. Yes, responds this film, although the protagonist is hardly sure of that at any moment until the end.