Cats and writers

“You belong to another time.

You are lord of a place

Bounded like a dream.”

                                                                                                         Jorge Luis Borges, To A Cat

Even an ordinary reader will share my observation that cats are often photographed with poets and writers. Either caught with them by coincidence, or just the opposite, exposing themselves proudly in front of the camera’s eye, they coddle, press or rub their cats with equal eagerness and tenacity. My question is whether this peculiar weakness towards those hairy animals is just a coincidence or something more significant. The phenomenon calls for further investigation.

Before I do that, however, let me hold off the obvious clarion call of all those who are eager cat opponents. They will certainly try to prove that the mushrooming of cats appearing here and there in the writers’ photos are just the unimportant ‘heroes of the second perspective’, passers-by of no relevance or even the opposite – cunning rude intruders, who driven by vanity and envy sneaked into the frame to present his or her majestic posture. And that is why, for example, we have the pictures of Herman Hesse crawling after his black cat, Joyce Carol Oates kneeling in front of hers, or often believed as degenerate Charles Bukowsky in a tender liaison with his white feline.

The fact is that not only pictures – these concrete and visual proofs of writers’ deep fascination with cats but also their works such as novels, stories and poems, indicate some unique feline nature that has always attracted ‘the people of letters.’ Enough to say Colette wrote a novel entitled The Cat, Bradbury (best known for his 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451) in 2004 published the short story collection The Cat’s Pajamas. Cortázar was a cat lover who owned a cat named Theodor W. Adorno who he wrote about extensively in the book Around the Day in Eighty Worlds. Similarly, Dorris Lessing who had many cats, notably the awkwardly majestic El Magnifico, who she wrote about lovingly in the short memoir The Old Age of El Magnifico. And even Burroughs – for many considered a degenerate and more than eccentric, wrote a book, The Cat Inside, where he wrote lovingly of his companions such as Calico Jane, Fletch, Rooski, Wimpy, and Ed. There we have also poetry written for and about cats like To A Cat by Jorge Luis Borges or poems by Edith Sodergran, Ann Sexton or William Carlos Williams.

However, one of the most spectacular manifestations of cat fascination in literature comes from Truman Capote’s Breakfast At Tiffany’s. Although the cat does not even have a name in the story, it is an indispensable part for the reading of the novel. Who would not remember the last scene when Holly played by Audrey Hepburn caressing the nameless feline, sums up the novella with the quote: ‘If I could find a real-life place that made me feel like Tiffany’s, then I’d buy some furniture and give the cat a name.’ In the earlier part of the story, she confesses: ‘It’s a little inconvenient, his not having a name. But I haven’t any right to give him one: He’ll have to wait until he belongs to somebody. We just sort of hooked up by the river one day, we don’t belong to each other. He’s an independent, and so am I. I don’t want to own anything until I know I’ve found a place where me and things belong together.’

Hers are the words of true understanding of cats’ solitary nature and intuitive respect for their independent character which undoubtedly was Capote’s projection of his and other writers’ predilections. But except for these most popular traits of cats’ characters like independence or the cosy comfort of their hairy company, is there anything else that makes them especially cherished by poets and writers?

Of course and these are many, sometimes quite unexpected and peculiar, virtues. 

One of the most practical was presented by Joyce Carol Oates who, in her own cats, can see a kind of ‘spurs’ when she confesses: ‘I write so much because my cat sits on my lap. She purrs so I don’t want to get up. She’s so much more calming than my husband.’

Some, like William S. Burroughs, stress their supercilious life attitude and could repeat after him that: ‘The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself.’

Others single cats out for their therapeutic traits. Let us take Patricia Highsmith - an author of widely-acclaimed psychological thrillers - who claims that it is a psychological balance that cats offer. Urich Weber, the curator of  Highsmith’s archive, once explained that ‘she was very happy among cats. They gave her a closeness that she could not bear in the long-term from people. She needed cats for her psychological balance.’ In a similar vein, Charles Bukowsky, who strongly believed in cats’ remedial qualities, once said: ‘A bunch of cats around is good. If you’re feeling bad, you just look at the cats, you’ll feel better, because they know everything is, just as it is. There’s nothing to get excited about. They just know. They’re saviors. The more cats you have, the longer you live.’

It cannot be left unremarked that cats are true epigones of philosophical thoughts and ideas. If  we take a 20^th century existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, his relationship with a cat was depicted as he was holding a nice feline while at work. It absolutely cannot be denied that she may have influenced  his main conviction that humans, just like cats, are ‘condemned to be free’. And if we really have a close look at cats, it will soon be clear that they are all existentialists by nature.

Jacques Derrida, another philosopher-deconstructionist, wrote extensively of the feline gaze in an essay (originally delivered as a ten-hour lecture) titled The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow). The essay focuses on a moment when a ‘real cat, truly, believe me, a little cat’ catches the philosopher in the bathroom as he steps out of the shower and ‘stares’ at him, which provokes Derrida to subsequent philosophical drainage.

Undoubtedly, one of the traits of cats’ characters mostly admired by poets and writers is their strong personality and self-confidence. And indeed, that quality may be (by contrast) an object of admiration to rather indecisive, open to novelty and change unstable personalities of the artists. Neil Gaiman seems to have captured it perfectly in his Coraline: ‘No, said the cat. Now, you people have names. That’s because you don’t know who you are. We know who we are, so we don’t need names.’

And then we have such desirable moral virtues as courage and bravery. As Ernest Hemingway once noticed: ‘A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.’ In a similar manner, Charles Bukowsky confesses: ‘When I am feeling low, all I have to do is watch my cats and my courage returns.’

Courage, philosophical mark, remedy, poetic distance and last but not least – fun. Besides being good and patient companions lying for hours on the writer’s desk or lap, cats can be really funny. Making faces at you, rolling their eyes if not comfortable enough on your hard desk but besides all that, as a poet W.H. Auden has noticed: ‘Cats can be very funny, and have the oddest ways of showing they’re glad to see you. Rudimace always peed in our shoes.’

Dickens, Twain, Eliot and still many others loved cats. Edgar Allan Poe seems even to have liked his cat more than his wife. At least this may be the impression if you look at his picture with a cat lying around his neck while he is writing, as his wife sits alone looking into a fireplace with the visible sadness of someone rejected and forlorn. The litany of famous names adoring  their cats would be long to recite. All of the writers and poets loved cats for the traits they represented and still more appreciated them for the qualities they desired themselves. However, there is one point at which their existences cross – that is the life of unpenetrable depth and mystery.