Méry.
Public sentiment is not so unanimously in favour of cats, yet they have had their warm admirers, while in Egypt they were adored as divine—worshipped as an emblem of the moon. When a cat died, the owners gave the body a showy funeral, went into mourning, and shaved off their eyebrows. Diodorus tells of a Roman soldier who was condemned to death for killing a cat. It is said that Cambyses, King of Persia, when he went to fight the Egyptians, fastened before every soldier’s breast a live cat. Their enemies dared not run the risk of hurting their sacred pets, and so were conquered.
Artists, monarchs, poets, diplomatists, religious leaders, authors, have all condescended to care for cats. A mere list of their names would make a big book. For instance, Godefroi Mind, a German artist, was called the Raphael of Cats. People would hunt him up in his attic, and pay large prices for his pictures. In the long winter evenings he amused himself carving tiny cats out of chestnuts, and could not make them fast enough for those who wanted to buy. Mohammed was so fond of his cat Muezza that once, when she was sleeping on his sleeve, he cut off the sleeve rather than disturb her. Andrew Doria, one of the rulers of Venice, not only had a portrait painted of his pet cat, but after her death had her skeleton preserved as a treasure. Richelieu’s special favourite was a splendid Angora, his resting place being the table covered with state papers. Montaigne used to rest himself by a frolic with his cat. Fontenelle liked to place his “Tom” in an armchair and deliver an oration before him. The cat of Cardinal Wolsey sat by his side when he received princes. Petrarch had his pet feline embalmed and placed in his apartment.
You see, the idea of the cat being the pet of old maids alone is far from true. Edward Lear, of Nonsense Verses fame, wrote of himself:
He has many friends, laymen and clerical;
Old Foss is the name of his cat;
His body is perfectly spherical;
He weareth a runcible hat.
Wordsworth wrote about a Kitten and the Falling Leaves. A volume of two hundred and eighty-five pages of poems in all languages, consecrated to the memory of a single cat, was published at Milan in 1741. Shelley wrote verses to a cat.
It seems unjust to assert that the cat is incapable of personal attachment, when she has won the affection of so many of earth’s great ones. The skull of Morosini’s cat is preserved among the relics of that Venetian worthy. Andrea Doria’s cat was painted with him. Sir Henry Wyat’s gratitude to the cat who saved him from starvation in the Tower of London by bringing him pigeons to eat, caused this remark: “You shall not find his picture anywhere but with a cat beside him.” Cowper often wrote about his cats and kittens. Horace Walpole wrote to Gray, mourning the loss of his handsomest cat, and Gray replied: “I know Zara and Zerlina, or rather I knew them both together, for I can not justly say which was which. Then, as to your handsomest cat, I am no less at a loss; as well as knowing one’s handsomest cat is always the cat one likes best, or, if one be alive and the other dead, it is usually the latter that is handsomest. Besides, if the point were so clear, I hope you do not think me so ill bred as to forget my interest in the survivor—oh, no! I would rather seem to mistake, and imagine, to be sure, that it must be the tabby one.” It was the tabby; her death being sudden and pitiful, tumbling from a “lofty vase’s side” while trying to secure a goldfish for her dinner. Gray sent Walpole an ode inspired by the misfortune, in which he said:
What woman’s heart can gold despise?
What cat’s averse to fish?
and thus describes the final scene:
Eight times emerging from the flood,
She mewed to every watery god
Some speedy aid to send.
No dolphin came, no Nereid stirred,
Nor cruel Tom nor Susan heard.
A favourite has no friend.
Upon Gray’s death, Walpole placed Zerlina’s vase upon a pedestal marked with the first stanza.
Jeremy Bentham at first christened his cat Langbourne; afterward, Sir John Langbourne; and when very wise and dignified, the Rev. Sir John Langbourne, D. D. Pius IX allowed his cat to sit with him at table, waiting his turn to be fed in a most decorous manner. Théophile Gautier tells us how beautifully his cats behaved at the dinner table. A friend visiting Bishop Thirlwall in his retirement, thought he looked weary, and asked him to take the big easy-chair. “Don’t you see who is already there?” said the great churchman, pointing to a cat asleep on the cushion. “She must not be disturbed.” Helen Hunt Jackson devoted a large book to the praise of cats and kittens. We know that Isaac Newton was fond of cats, for did he not make two holes in his barn door—a big one for old pussy to go in and out, and a little one for the kitty?
Among French authors we recall Rousseau, who has much to say in favour of felines. Colbert reared half a dozen cats in his study, and taught them many interesting tricks. The cat supplied Perrault with one of the most attractive subjects of his stories, and under the magical pen of this admirable story-teller, Puss in Boots has become an example of the power of work, industry, and savoir-faire. Gautier scoffs at storms raging without, as long as he has
Sur mes genoux un chat qui se joue et folâtre,
Un livre pour veiller, un fauteil pour devenir.
Béranger, in his idyl The Cat, makes an intelligent cat a go-between of lovers. Baudelaire returned from his wanderings in the East a devotee of cats, and addressed to them several fine bits of verse; they are seen in his poetry, as dogs in the paintings of Paul Veronese. Here is a sample:
Come, beauty, rest upon my loving heart,
But cease thy paws’ sharp-nailèd play,
And let me peer into those eyes that dart
Mixed agate and metallic ray.
Again:
Grave scholars and mad lovers all admire
And love, and each alike, at his full tide
Those suave and puissant cats, the fireside’s pride,
Who like the sedentary life and glow of fire.
How he enjoys, nay, revels in the musical purr!—
Those tones which purl and percolate
Deep down into my shadowy soul,
Exalt me like a fine tune’s roll,
And yield the joy love philters make.
There is no note in the world,
Nor perfect instrument I know,
Can lift my heart to such a glow
And set its vibrant chord in whirl,
As thy rich voice mysterious.
Champfleury, another French writer, has recorded that, visiting Victor Hugo once, he found, in a room decorated with tapestries and Gothic furniture, a cat enthroned on a dais, and apparently receiving the homage of the company. Sainte-Beuve’s cat sat on his desk, and walked freely over his critical essays. “I value in the cat,” says Chateaubriand, “that indifferent and almost ungrateful temper which prevents itself from attaching itself to any one; the indifference with which it passes from the salon to the housetop.” Marshal Turenne amused himself for hours in playing with his kittens. The great general, Lord Heathfield, would often appear on the walls of Gibraltar at the time of the famous siege, attended by his favourite cats. Montaigne wrote: “When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me? We mutually divert each other with our play. If I have my hour to begin or refuse, so has she.” As George Eliot puts it, “Who can tell what just criticisms the cat may be passing on us beings of wider speculation?” Chateaubriand’s cat Micette is well known. He used to stroke her tail, to notify Madame Récamier that he was tired or bored.
Cats and their friendships are not spoken of in the Bible. But they are mentioned in Sanskrit writing two thousand years old, and, as has been said before, they were household pets and almost idols with the Egyptians, who mummied them in company with kings and princes. They were also favourites in India and Persia, and can claim relationship with the royal felines of the tropics. Simonides, in his Satire on Women, the earliest extant, sets it down that froward women were made from cats, just as most virtuous, industrious matrons were developed from beer. In Mills’s History of the Crusades the cat was an important personage in religious festivals. At Aix, in Provence, the finest he cat was wrapped like a child in swaddling clothes and exhibited in a magnificent shrine: every knee bent, every hand strewed flowers.
Several cats have been immortalized by panegyrics and epitaphs from famous masters. Joachim de Bellay has left this pretty tribute:
C’est Beland, mon petit chat gris—
Beland, qui fut peraventure
Le plus bel œuvre que nature
Fit onc en matière de chats.
The pensive Selima, owned by Walpole, was mourned by Gray, and from the Elegy we get the favourite aphorism, “A favourite has no friends.” Arnold mourned the great Atossa. One of Tasso’s best sonnets was addressed to his favourite cat. Cats figure in literature from Gammer Gurton’s Needle to our own day. Shakespeare mentions the cat forty-four times—“the harmless, necessary cat,” etc. Goldsmith wrote:
Around in sympathetic mirth
Its tricks the kitten tries;
The cricket chirrups in the hearth,
The crackling fagot flies.
Joanna Baillie wrote in the same strain.
In one of Gay’s fables about animals the cat is asked what she can do to benefit the proposed confederation. She answers scornfully:
... These teeth, these claws,
With vigilance shall serve the cause.
The mouse destroyed by my pursuit
No longer shall your feasts pollute,
Nor eat, from nightly ambuscade
With watchful teeth your stores invade.
The story of Dick Whittington and his cat is doubtless true. All the pictorial and architectural relics of Whittington represent him with the cat—a black and white cat—at his left hand, or his hand resting on a cat. One of the figures that adorned the gate at Newgate represented Liberty with the figure of a cat lying at her feet. Whittington was a former founder. In the cellar of his old house at Gloucester there was found a stone, probably part of a chimney, showing in basso-rilievo the figure of a boy carrying in his arms a cat. Cowper has a poem on A Cat retired from Business. Heinrich’s verses are well known, or should be:
The neighbours’ old cat often
Came to pay us a visit.
We made her a bow and a courtesy,
Each with a compliment in it.
After her health we asked,
Our care and regard to evince;
We have made the very same speeches
To many an old cat since.
This translation was by Mrs. Browning; many others have tried it with success. Alfred de Musset apostrophized his cats in verse. Paul de Koch frequently describes a favourite cat in his novels. Hoffman, the German novelist, introduces cats into his weird and fantastic tales, and Poe has given us The Black Cat. Keats composed a