CATASTROPHES
"And when Maeldune and his men went into the best of the houses they saw no one in it but a little cat that was in the middle of the house, and it playing about on the four stone pillars that were there, and leaping from one to another. It looked at the men for a short space, but it did not stop from its play."
—Lady Gregory's Book of Saints and Wonders.
People are people, and cats are cats. We do not know our pussies. We pet them but we cannot tame them. Landor's Cincirollo,
"wagging his dread jaw at every chirp
Of bird above him on the olive branch,"
is latent in Wordsworth's
"kitten on the wall
Sporting with the leaves that fall."