by L A Vocelle
The American author Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), famous for her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, had a Maltese cat named after her husband Calvin. When Stowe had to move, she gave the large cat to Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900), who grew to love Calvin and even wrote an entire chapter devoted to the life of the cherished animal, Calvin (A Study of Character) from my Summer in a Garden in 1870.
Even the romantic poet Emily Dickinson, around 1862, penned a poem about a cat.
She Sights a Bird – she chuckles—
She sights a Bird – she chuckles-
She flattens – then she crawls –
She runs without the look of feet –
Her eyes increase to Balls –
Her Jaws stir – twitching – hungry
Her Teeth can hardly stand –
She leaps, but Robin leaped the first –
Ah, Pussy, of the Sand,
The Hopes so juicy ripening –
You almost bathed your Tongue –
when bliss disclosed a hundred
Toes –
And fled with every one –
(Johnson, 1955)
As was the fashion of the time, cat poems and stories were essential to the upbringing of children. The short children’s readers Dame Trot and Dame Wiggins of Lee, mentioned earlier, led the way in children’s literature. However, many other poems were written.
Eugene Field, a newspaper journalist and poet (1850-1895), wrote the following poem that teaches the lesson that arguing can go badly for both sides.
The Duel
THE GINGHAM dog and the calico cat
Side by side on the table sat;
‘Twas half-past twelve, and (what do you think!)
Nor one nor t’ other had slept a wink!
The old Dutch clock and the Chinese plate
Appeared to know as sure as fate
There was going to be a terrible spat.
(I wasn’t there; I simply state|
What was told to me by the Chinese plate!)
The gingham dog went “bow-wow-wow!”
And the calico cat replied “mee-ow!”
The aire was littered, an hour or so,
With bits of gingham and calico,
While the old Dutch clock in the chimney-place
Up with its hands before its face,
For it always dreaded a family row!
(Nevermind: I’m only telling you
What the old Dutch clock declares is true!)
The Chinese plate looked very blue,
And wailed, “Oh, dear! What shall we do!”
But the gingham dog and the calico cat
Wallowed this way and tumbled that,
Employing every tooth and claw
In the awfullest way you ever saw—
And, oh! how the gingham and calico flew!
(Don’t fancy I exaggerate ---
I got my news from the Chinese plate!)
Next morning where the two had sat
The found no trace of dog or cat;
And some folks think unto this day
That burglars stole that pair away!
But the truth about the cat and pup
Is this: they ate each other up!
Now what do you really think of that!
(The old Dutch clock it told me so,
And that is how I came to know.)
(Lounsbury, 1912).
The French novelist, George Sand (1804-1876), her real name Amantine Aurore Lucile Dupin Dudevant, is said to have written much of her work in bed and shared her breakfast bowl with her cat, Minou.
A cat, François, plays an integral part in Émile Zola’s (1840-1902) novel Thérèse Raquin (1867), seemingly assuming diabolical supernatural powers, as it sits and observes the two main characters commit a murder which leads to their own self destruction. The murderer, the superstitious Laurent, sees Françoise, Madame Raquin’s pet cat, as a witness to his crime. “Dignified and motionless, he (François) stared with is round eyes at the two lovers, appearing to examine them carefully, never blinking, lost in a kind of devilish ecstasy.” Once the conspiring lovers drown Camille, the cat’s behavior, while always realistic, accentuates their guilt and anxiety. On the night of their marriage, they hear a scratching at the door and believe that it is the drowned man who has come back to haunt them, but they realize that it is only the cat, François. François then “…bounded onto a chair, where with bristling fur and legs stiff he stood looking at his new master with a hard, cruel stare”. Laurent understood the cat’s actions as an attempt at revenge (Rogers, 2006 p. 67). The novel almost mirrors the use of the cat Pluto in Poe’s The Black Cat, wherein both the murderous main characters come to view the cat as a satanic nemesis.
In Paul Verlaine’s (1844-1896) poem Woman and Cat (1866) both woman and cat are demonic. He uses the age-old idea of witch and familiar and equates the woman and cat as reflections of each other. The last line of the poem refers to the eyes of the woman and cat and the bright light that emanates from them. Phosphor means morning star and is a reference to Lucifer.
WOMAN AND CAT
(Poèmes Saturniens: Caprices I, Femme et Chatte)
She was playing with her cat:
And it was lovely to see
The white hand and white paw
Fight, in shadows of eve.
She hid – little wicked one! –
In black silk mittens
Claws of murderous agate,
Fierce and bright as kittens’.
The other too was full of sweetness,
Sheathing her sharp talons’ caress,
Though the devil lacked nothing there…
And in the bedroom, where sonorous
Ethereal laughter tinkled in the air,
There shone four points of phosphorus.
On the other hand, the publisher of the French dictionary, Pierre Larousse viewed the cat in a more positive light, writing, “The cat is attractive, adroit, clean, and voluptuous: he likes his leisure, he searches out only the softest furniture to sleep and play on.” “The philosophes of the last century affirmed on good authority no doubt, that a pronounced taste for cats in certain people was indication of superior merit” (Kete, 1994, pp. 118, 123).
The short-lived French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), had much in common with Edgar Allan Poe. Both would die young, and both were interested in the macabre and supernatural. Baudelaire and Poe suffered from depression, drug and alcohol abuse and were sensitive men who enjoyed the company of cats. Baudelaire was often known to enter a house and give his full attention to any cat available, completely ignoring his human companions. Baudelaire was not unaccustomed to scandal and his penchant for giving felines more of his attention was ridiculed perhaps almost as much as his immoral poems. He described himself as “A voluptuous wheedling cat, with velvety manners.”
The publication of Baudelaire’s collection of poems, The Flowers of Evil in 1857 created a public scandal. The French court ruled it to be an obscene collection, and some of the poems had to be deleted in subsequent editions. The Cats was first published in the journal Le Corsaire in 1847, and was ultimately included in Baudelaire’s collection of 1857, known in English as The Flowers of Evil. In the following poems Baudelaire is symbolically equating cats with women and their ambiguity, a symbol of both the sacred and profane.
The Cats
The lover and the stern philosopher
Both love, in their ripe time, the confident
Soft cats, the house’s chiefest ornament,
Who like themselves are cold and seldom stir.
Of knowledge and of pleasure amorous,
Silence they seek and Darkness' fell domain;
Had not their proud souls scorned to brook his rein,
They would have made grim steeds for Erebus.
Pensive they rest in noble attitudes
Like great stretched sphinxes in vast solitudes
Which seem to sleep wrapt in an endless dream;
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Their fruitful loins are full of sparks divine,
And gleams of gold within their pupils shine
As 'twere within the shadow of a stream (Squire, 1909).
The Cat (II)
I.
In my mind it strolls
As well as in my apartment,
A cat, strong, sweet and delightful.
When it meows, one scarcely hears it,
Its timbre is so tender and discreet;
Whether a growl or an appeasement,
It is always rich and deep?
That is its charm and its secret.
That voice, which pearls and filters
To the darkest recess of my purse
Delights me like a philtre
And fills me like the rhythms of a verse.
It lulls the most cruel pains to sleep
And contains all ecstasies,
It has not the need of words to speak
The lengthiest phraseologies.
There is no bow that tears so profound
On my heart's perfect strings,
No sovereign instrument vibrant with sound
Could stronger in me sing
Than your voice, mysterious
Seraphic, blissful cat? in form an angel,
Strange cat? in which all is
As harmonious as it is subtle.
II.
Out of its fur, brown and blonde
Rose a perfume so sweet I nearly
Dissolved in its scent, one night, embalmed
When I caressed it once, once only.
It is the familiar mien of a sire;
It judges, it presides, it inspires
All things in its empire;
Is there a fairy, is there a God, in its eyes fires?
When my eyes finally tire and pull away,
Turned around as by a magnet they veer
From this cat that I love, and gently
Look at myself in the mirror,
I see to my astonishment
The fire of its pale pupils inside me
Like beacons, lively opals clear and dominant
Contemplating me fixedly.(Baudelaire, 1868)
The Cat
Come, superb cat, to my amorous heart;
Hold back the talons of your paws,
Let me gaze into your beautiful eyes
Of metal and agate.
When my fingers leisurely caress you,
Your head and your elastic back,
And when my hand tingles with the pleasure
Of feeling your electric body,
In spirit I see my woman. Her gaze
Like your own, amiable beast,
Profound and cold, cuts and cleaves like a dart,
And, from her head down to her feet,
A subtle air, a dangerous perfume
Floats about her dusky body (Aggeler, 1954).
Guy de Maupassant, even though not much of a cat lover, mentioned Baudelaire’s love of cats in an essay he wrote about cats†. Maupassant wrote, “A woman is a perfidious tricky cat, with claws and fangs, an enemy in love who will bite him when she is tired of kisses” (Maupassant, 1955).
Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) had a cat that greeted him at the door every night. In his short story, Passion in the Desert, a lost French soldier and a panther form an interesting love relationship. In another short story, The Afflictions of an English Cat, or also known as Peines de Cour d’une chatte anglaise (Complaints of the Heart of an English Cat), the cat is used more as a metaphor in the satire on British society. Loosely based on Balzac’s play, an adapted opera was written and performed in 1983.
Alexander Dumas (1802-1870) called the cat a “traitor, deceiver, theif...egoist…ingrate. Her egoism is proof of her superiority: the dog’s willingness to hunt for man demonstrates his stupidity, while the cat has an excuse. When she catches a bird, for she means to eat it herself” (Aberconway, 1968). Even so, Dumas had a cat, Mysouff, who he said, “…would jump up on my knees as if he were a dog, then run off and turn then take the road home, returning at a gallop” (Kete, 1994, p. 129).
The French poet and writer Théophile Gautier (1811-1872), truly adored cats. Many of his poems include them, and they were his beloved companions. An excerpt from the Daily Telegraph of 1895, describes his passionate affection for his felines.
“Théophile Gautier, one of the most famous and artistic French authors of the present century, had an especial fondness of all animals, but cats were his particular favorites. In his book called ‘La Menagerie Intime’ he describes his household pets.
One of the first was Childebrand, a short-haired, fawn colored beauty, striped with black velvet, like the clown in Hugo’s ‘Roi s’Amuse’. He had great green eyes, almond-shaped, and surrounded by bands of black.
Madame Théophile was another favorite, reddish and white breasted, pink-nosed and blue-eyed. She dwelt with him on terms of great intimacy, sleeping with him, sitting on the arm of his chair when he wrote, following him on his walks through the garden and always present at meals, when she sometimes stole attractive bits from his plate.
He tells an amusing tale about her and a parrot left in his charge for a short time by an absent friend. Madame Théophile had never beheld a parrot, and it astonished her greatly by its gyrations and beak and claw and the strange motions of its awkward green body. She sat for a long time as still as an Egyptian mummied cat, watching it with meditation, for she had never seen such a peculiar example of natural history. Finally she seemed to say: ‘I have it now; it is a green chicken!’ Meanwhile the parrot watched the cat with increasing alarm, ruffling its feathers and whacking its beack uneasily against its cage. Presently the cat seemed to say: ‘Well, even if it is a green chicken, very likely it is good to eat.’
‘I watched the scene,’ says Gautier. ‘Her paws gradually spread and contracted, she gave alternative purrs and growls, and prepared for a spring. The parrot, perceiving the danger, said in a deep bass voice: ‘Have you breakfasted, Jacquot?’
The blare from a trumpet, a pistol shot, an earthquake, could not have frightened her more. All her ornithological ideas were upset. ‘What more,’ said the parrot, ‘the king’s roast beef?’
The cat’s face expressed terror. ‘He is not a bird; he is a monsieur,’ she seemed to say. The green creature then sang a French couplet about good wine, and the cat, fleeing for her life, took refuge under the bed.
Madame Théophile had all the tastes of a great French lady, being especially fond of perfumes, but patchouli and vertivert would throw her into ecstasies. She liked music, too, but sharp, high notes affected her and she would put her paw upon a singer’s lips when such a high note distressed her.
A third favorite was brought to Gautier from Havana by a friend. This was an Angora, as white as a swan, the founder of the ‘White Dynasty.’ He received the name of Pierrot, and as he grew older and more dignified this was extended to Don Pierrot de Navarre. He always loved to be with people, adored Gautier’s literary friends, and used to sit silently when they discussed great questions, sometimes putting his head on one side and occasionally making a little cry. He used to play with the books, turning over the leaves with his paws and going to sleep on top of them. Like Childebrand, he used to sit by the author when he was at work and watch his pen move across the paper with intense interest. He never went to bed until Gautier returned home, and no matter how late it was he would bound out in the dark to greet him, and as soon as the candle was lit scamper ahead like a page. His companion was a beautiful puss, as white as snow, and owing to her celestial purity she was named ‘Seraphita,’ for Balzac’s romance” (Singleton, 1895).
The first line of his work, My Private Menagerie, states, “I have often been caricatured in Turkish dress seated upon cushions, and surrounded by cats so familiar that they did not hesitate to climb upon my shoulders and even upon my head. The caricature is truth slightly exaggerated, and I must own that all my life I have been as fond of animals in ge
neral and of cats in particular as any Brahmin or old maid” (Gautier, 1902/2014, p. 4).
The French philosopher and writer Hippolyte-Adolphe Taine (1828-1893) was a proponent of positivism, a belief that all knowledge comes from sense perception. His senses obviously told him that cats were wise beings, as he is quoted as saying, “I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.”
The poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) rose to become one of the most well-known Bohemian Austrian poets in the German language. Rilke was also a family friend to the artist Balthasar Klossowski (1908-2001), and eventually became his mother’s lover and his surrogate father. Rilke inspired Balthus, as he later became known, to write and illustrate his first book, Mitsou, about a cat. Rilke’s poetry is still popular today, and in his poem, Black Cat (1923), he portrays the cat as a mystical being engulfing insignificant man.
BLACK CAT
A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing; but here
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly disappear:
just as a raving madman, when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified.
She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once
as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
