ON CATS E-Book

Various

• Herausgeber: Notting Hill Editions
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

For centuries, cats have been worshipped, adored and mistrusted in equal measure. This beautiful gift book contains a selection of essays, stories and poems ON CATS, by writers from across the centuries.In these pages, writers reflect on the curious feline qualities that inspire such devotion in their owners, even when it seems one-sided.Edward Gorey can't turn down a stray despite the trouble they cause him, and admits he has no idea what they're thinking about; Muriel Spark gives practical advice on how to teach a cat to play ping-pong; Nikola Tesla, who helped design the modern electricity supply system, describes a seminal experience with a cat that first sparked his fascination with electricity; and Caitlin Moran considers the unexpected feelings of loss after the death of her family cat.These writers, and many others (including Mary Gaitskill, Alice Walker, Ursula K. Le Guin, John Keats, James Bowen, Lynne Truss and more), paint a joyful portrait of cats and their mysterious and loveable ways. As Hemingway wrote, 'one cat leads to another'.

Leseprobe

Notting Hill Editions is an independent British publisher. The company was founded by Tom Kremer (1930–2017), champion of innovation and the man responsible for popularising the Rubik’s Cube.

After a successful business career in toy invention Tom decided, at the age of eighty, to fulfil his passion for literature. In a fast-moving digital world Tom’s aim was to revive the art of the essay, and to create exceptionally beautiful books that would be lingered over and cherished.

Hailed as ‘the shape of things to come’, the family-run press brings to print the most surprising thinkers of past and present. In an era of information-overload, these collectible pocket-size books distil ideas that linger in the mind.

ON CATS

An Anthology

–

Introduced by Margaret Atwood

Photographs by Elliot Ross

Edited by Suzy Robinson

Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose.

– Garrison Keillor

Contents

Title PageEpigraph– Introduction –– TOVE JANSSON –from The Summer Book– HILAIRE BELLOC –from A Conversation with a Cat, and Others– ANONYMOUS – Pangur Bán (The Monk and his Cat)– LOU ANDREAS-SALOMÉ –from The Freud Journal of Lou Andreas-Salomé– ERNEST HEMINGWAY – Letter to Hadley Mowrer, 25 November 1943– LYNNE TRUSS –from Making the Cat Laugh: One Woman’s Journal of Single Life on the Margins– LEWIS CARROLL –from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland– DORIS LESSING –from Particularly Cats– RING LARDNER – It Looks Bad for the Three Little Lardner Kittens– NAOMI FRY – Mog the Cat and the Mysteries of Animal Subjectivity– MURIEL SPARK –from Robinson– EDWARD GOREY –from The Cat on My Shoulder: Writers and their Cats– CAITLIN MORAN – A Death in the Family– OLIVER SODEN –from Jeoffry: The Poet’s Cat– CHRISTINA ROSSETTI – On the Death of a Cat, a Friend of Mine, Aged Ten Years and a Half– MARY GAITSKILL –from Lost Cat– URSULA K. LE GUIN –from My Life So Far, By Pard– REBECCA WEST –from Why My Mother was Frightened of Cats– THE REVEREND HENRY ROSS – An Inscription at St. Augustine with St. Faith’s Church– BOHUMIL HRABAL –from All My Cats– GUY DE MAUPASSANT –from On Cats– JOHN KEATS – To Mrs. Reynolds’ Cat– JAMES BOWEN –from A Street Cat Named Bob– NIKOLA TESLA –from A Story of Youth Told by Age– BROTHERS GRIMM – Cat and Mouse in Partnership– ALICE WALKER –from Frida, The Perfect FamiliarCat-echismsPermissionsOther titles from Notting Hill EditionsAbout the AuthorsCopyright

MARGARET ATWOOD

– Introduction –

I was a cat-deprived young child. I longed for a kitten, but was denied one: we spent two thirds of every year in the north woods of Canada, so if we took the cat with us it would run away and get lost and be eaten by wolves; but if we did not take it with us, who would look after it?

These objections were unanswerable. I bided my time. Meanwhile I fantasised. My drawings as a six-year-old are festooned with flying cats, and my first book – a volume of poems put together with folded sheets and a construction-paper cover – was called Rhyming Cats, and had an illustration of a cat playing with a ball. This cat looked like a sausage with ears and whiskers, but it was early days in my design career.

Then our months spent in the woods became fewer, and I saw an opening. A cat belonging to one of my friends had kittens. Could I, would they, can’t I, why not? I wore them down. My father was never entirely easy about having an indoor cat – he was born at the beginning of the twentieth century on a small backwoods farm, so for him cats belonged in the barn, their job was to catch rats and mice, and unwanted kittens were drowned in a sack – but xiihe conceded that this particular cat was unusually agreeable and intelligent, for a cat.

This cat’s name was Percolator. (A pun of sorts. I expect you noticed.) Her nickname was Perky, and she lived up to it, being alert and energetic. She slept in the dolls’ bed in my room – never much used for dolls – or else on top of me, and I loved her dearly. In those days we didn’t yet know that we should not let cats outside due to their devastating effect on wild bird populations, so Perky went in and out at night through my ground-floor bedroom window, and brought me nocturnal presents. The presents were things she had caught. If mice, they were usually dead, but several birds were not, and had to be pursued around the room, captured, and rescued via shoebox hospital. If the interventions were successful the birds would be released in the morning; if not, there would be burials. Once there was a rabbit, which did not have any bite marks on it as such, and gave me and also Perky a lively chase before being inserted into the shoebox. Unfortunately, it died anyway, probably of shock. (Grabbed by a monster. Incarcerated by an alien. You can see how upsetting that would have been.)

In the summers, when we went to the north woods, our next-door neighbour, Rhea, kindly fed Perky, who seemed to be able to fend quite well for herself outside. There was an abandoned orchard nearby and a cemetery within reach, so she had xiiiample hunting grounds. All went well until the day of Rhea’s garden party. The women in their flowered dresses and sunhats were seated around a large low table, on which there was a platter of stuffed dates rolled in powdered sugar. Oblong, moist. Perky, to show gratitude, brought a gift – a dead mole, well-licked and smoothed, also oblong and moist – and laid it on the platter. Someone almost ate it. You can imagine. (But still, how clever!)

Then, when I was almost twelve, I had a baby sister. This event spelled doom for Perky. One day when I came home from school she was not there. She’d been caught licking milk from the baby’s mouth, and, fearful that she would sit on the baby’s head and smother her, my parents had ‘given her away’. I expect this had meant a trip to the Humane Society and a swift death, but I never knew. Nowadays there would be a family consultation and much empathetic explaining, no doubt, though the cat would have been done away with anyway. As it was, this was a tragedy, a thunderbolt from Zeus; and like a thunderbolt from Zeus, there was no sense in questioning it. Did I resent this disappearance of my first cat? I did. Have I ever forgotten it? As you can see, I haven’t. How could I have been so heartlessly severed from my animal daemon in this way? But so it was.

Other cats followed, though much later: hard to have a cat when you are living in residences, rooming houses, and rented apartments that said NO PETS. xivBut after a while along came Patience, who got stuck all over with burrs and then rolled on the afghan I had just painstakingly knitted; and Ruby, the tough, formidable senior we inherited when we moved to a farm, and who used to go for walks with us like a dog.

Then, suddenly, I had a small child of my own, and she too was afflicted with longing for a cat. The inevitable was staved off for a short period: there was already a mouse in the household. It cannot be said to have been very friendly: it went round and round on its exercise wheel, bit fingers, and from time to time emitted foul smells. But then the mouse died. It was being shown off to two visiting boys, and a skit from Monty Python ensued.

‘This mouse is dead!’

‘No it isn’t, it’s sleeping.’

‘Look! Dead!’ (Pokes mouse.)

Was there trauma? There was not. The mouse was given a formal burial in the back yard, complete with songs, and was known to have gone to heaven because squeaking was heard high above. (Chimney swifts, I expect.) The grave was then re-opened, and behold, no mouse was in it! (Dirt from the covering sod had concealed it.) Two minutes later: ‘Now that the mouse is dead, can I have a kitten?’

A neighbour had some, and was more than happy to part with two, ‘So they will have someone to play with.’ Naming rights were given to the xvfive-year-old. One kitten was grey and fluffy, and was named Fluffy. The other was short-haired and black, and was named Blackie. Not sophisticated names, to be sure – no Oedipus, no Octopus, no Platypus, no Catatonic – but descriptive. These kittens were remarkably patient, and allowed themselves to be stuffed into dolls’ dresses and wheeled around in a toy buggy. (I had done the same to Perky, so who was I to tut-tut?) The rule was that they should not be allowed outside in these costumes, as they might get caught on branches and strangle on their bonnet strings, but occasionally they would escape, and passersby would be treated to the sight of one of them in a pinafore and flouncy hat, leaping from rooftop to rooftop at the second-storey level.

Fluffy was obliging, Blackie was a con artist. He used to sneak over to one of the neighbours and mew piteously, pretending to be lost. They would let him in and feed him. It took them a while to figure out that he lived a mere two doors down. When, shortly after that, we moved to a different address, it did not take him long to try out the new neighbours, but with an added touch: he would stick his paw inside his collar and demand to be rescued. Fluffy, meanwhile, was working the sidewalk beat, lolling around voluptuously, inviting pedestrians to rub her belly, and attracting treats. Ring of doorbell: total stranger. ‘Please tell Fluffy I’m so sorry I forgot her smoked salmon today, but I’ll bring it tomorrow.’ xvi

Children grow up and go away, and parents inherit the cats. This happens faster than you’d think. In no time at all I had two familiars. Fluffy claimed the stairway, and would contest this space with Blackie when he was going up or down; but Blackie owned my study, and would help me write, as cats do, by climbing onto the keyboard, messing up loose papers, or twanging the elastic bands around manuscripts. Neither of them were hunters. Squirrels would bounce off Blackie as he lay dozing, enticing him to chase them, but he would merely blink. Mice would appear in the kitchen – they’d come up a drainpipe, before we got that fixed – and Blackie and Fluffy would just stare at them. (‘Blackie! Fluffy! Do your thing!’ Looks of disdain: what were they, peasants?)

Though they were not devoid of defensive skills. I once saw the two of them watch an approaching and evil-intentioned raccoon – stalk still, tails twitching slightly – until the very last minute, when they flew at the intruder’s nose, all claws unsheathed. It was like something out of a John Keegan warfare strategy book: Keep together! Hold the line! Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes! No retreat! Attaaack!

There must have been confrontations with other cats, as well. In nature the territory for a male cat is a square mile. No wonder there are cat fights in cities. Blackie probably lost most of his fights: he was a xviiwily Ulysses, not a brawny Achilles. Once he came home with a claw stuck into his nose. (‘Blackie! What have you been up to?’ Heart-rending mew.) Torn ears and missing patches of fur and skin had to be doctored.

Writers and their cats – it’s a theme. There have been books of photos dedicated to it. There are also writers and their dogs, writers and their birds – parrots and ravens feature – and perhaps (I’m guessing) writers and their snakes, but I’d bet that the cats predominate. They interview well, projecting a mysterious aura while giving away exactly nothing. They hold still for the camera; they do not splash around in mud puddles and then jump all over the journalist; they do not pant and drool. Like all proper Romantics they are independent-minded, and Byronic in their contempt for authority. They are always well-groomed.

Are they Influences? Are they Muses? Yes and no, depending how you count. They certainly get into stories and poems, or at least they have gotten into mine. Not always ‘my’ cats, however: sometimes the cats of others. One cat – true story – belonged to a friend of mine; it was kidnapped by a vengeful ex and imprisoned in a locking-lid metal garbage can. (Happy-ending rescue after a frantic search and some ‘help me’ meowing.) A wish-fulfilment piece of mine called ‘Our Cat Enters Heaven’ features Blackie in disguise, and informs us that God is a xviiilarge cat. Or such would be the form in which he or she would surely appear to a cat.

This story was one of many iterations of my period of mourning after Blackie died. That is the downside to having a cat: cats die, most usually before you yourself do. I’m not sure why I was so flattened after the death of this particular cat, but I was.

The event occurred while we were away. My sister had been doing cat care, and Blackie had developed a kidney disease. Yes, it could be treated, said the vet, but Blackie would have to be given a needle twice a day and have a urine sample collected. What were the odds on that? Zero. One needle and Blackie would not have waited around for the second. He’d have been off to the shrubbery at first chance. As for the urine sample: ‘Blackie, pee in the bottle.’ Look of total contempt. End of story.

And it was the end of the story. My sister phoned long distance, in tearful distress. ‘Blackie’s d-d-dead!’ Me: ‘Oh no! What did you …’ She: ‘I wrapped him in red silk and put him in the f-f-freezer, so you could b-b-bury him yourself when you get back!’ She was living in a house with several roommates, and I had a vision of one of them pawing through the freezer in search of hamburger and coming across an initially promising packet. Unwrapping of freezer paper. What’s this? The Mummy Walks! Eeeking, dropping of frozen cat, flight … But that never happened.xix

We concealed Blackie’s death from our daughter for several weeks – she was at university, she was writing exams, it would be upsetting for her – and then we got hell for it.

‘How could you do this to me? Next time you have to tell me immediately!’ We came to realize that what she was really afraid of was that one of us would develop a terminal illness, and expire, and possibly be stowed in the freezer, and she wouldn’t be informed until it was too late. A parent who has behaved so duplicitously in the matter of a dead cat can surely not be trusted.

I wrote several commemorative poems. I also re-wrote Tennyson’s Morte d’Arthur, substituting cats. Blackie is the dying king, Sir Cativere is his trusty friend, the three queens on the barge bearing King Blackie to the mouse-filled island orchard of Avilion caterwaul in grief (‘And on the mere the mewing died away …’). Yes, I know, it was crazed. But strangely therapeutic.

Fluffy followed Blackie shortly after, but in a different way. She developed cat dementia; she could not remember where she was, and would roam the house at night emitting ghostly yowls. She could also not remember what cats were supposed to eat, and would take bites out of strange items. Is it pears? No. What about tomatoes? Not them either. Howl of despair.

But more time has passed. After a long period of xxabstinence, during which I told myself that I should not have cats again as I myself was getting a bit older and might trip on them going down the stairs, I have put myself on a list for two Siberian kittens. (Yes, like many cat people I have always had a slight allergy; but this kind of cat is supposed to be low on the allergen scale.) These will be indoor cats, and trained to walk on a leash, or so I fondly believe. Perhaps I will erect a Catio, so they can sunbathe while watching wildlife safely. I will have cat hammocks. I will have scratching posts. I will not allow myself to be distressed by shredded upholstery.

If I’m going to be a mad old lady with a witchy reputation I may as well equip myself with a couple of trusted familiars. Company as one flies through the air on one’s broom, wouldn’t you say?